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Latest comment: 3 years ago by Mz7 in topic Resolve the inconsistency between WP:DRAFTIFY and WP:ATD
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RfC: Locality categorization by historical subdivisions

Latest comment: 3 years ago38 comments18 people in discussion
While there is significant support for limiting the categorization of current localities by historical subdivisions in some way, no clear criterion emerges to do so systematically.

The consensus is to stick with the status quo (option C), by using common sense to assess on a case-by-case basis whether the categorization of a page reflects a relevant historical fact rather than a cataloguing attempt.

− Pintoch (talk) 11:50, 2 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Question: What should the general rule/principle/guideline be for categorizing current localities by historical administrative subdivision in Central and Eastern Europe? There are quite a few articles of cities and towns that have been categorized not only in which administrative subdivision they currently are in, but also by the former subdivisions.

Typical example: Eišiškės, a small town in Lithuania, is in these categories: Category:Cities in Lithuania, Category:Cities in Vilnius County, Category:Šalčininkai District Municipality, Category:Vilnius Voivodeship, Category:Lidsky Uyezd, Category:Nowogródek Voivodeship (1919–1939). The first 3 categories reflect the current administrative subdivision. Vilnius Voivodeship was a subdivision in 1413–1795. Lidsky Uyezd was a 2nd-level subdivision sometime between 1795–1915. Nowogródek Voivodeship (1919–1939) was an inter-war subdivision.

General options:

  • A: categorization should be limited - by what? Whether it is referenced in the article? How long the subdivision lasted? How large the subdivision was? To the 1st-level former subdivision? To how recent subdivision was? Etc?
  • B: categorization should not be allowed (i.e. current localities should be removed from the former subdivision categories; historical information could be preserved in a different venue like a separate list or an addition to the locality article or something similar to the "historical affiliation" box as in Görlitz#History)
  • C: status quo; no general rules; specific issues with individual categories should be addressed at WP:CfD

22:24, 21 February 2020 (UTC)


Major concerns with such categories:

  1. WP:OR/WP:V: many of the locality articles do not even mention or reference former subdivisions. In Eišiškės example above, only Nowogródek Voivodeship is mentioned in the article body (added by me 12 years ago without a reference). What is the basis to claim it was in the Lidsky Uyezd? An editor looking at a map? Finding out former subdivisions is not always straightforward, particularly for smaller towns or for older subdivisions – some medieval regions did not have well defined borders, while in more recent years administrative border adjustments are frequent.
  2. WP:NONDEF: if many of the articles don't even mention the historical subdivision, it cannot be the defining characteristic (which is the central goals of the categorization system).
  3. Confusion for readers: in the example of Eišiškės above, could you tell which of the 6 categories is for the current and which is for the former subdivision? (this could be somewhat alleviated by better category names)
  4. Clutter/maintainability: Görlitz lists 23 different countries/states (not to mention subdivisions) that it was a part of. Should all of these be represented in a category? If not all, then which ones?

Examples of categories: just some samples from different countries. Category:Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia (did not have well-defined borders), Category:Republic of Central Lithuania (has other valid historical articles mixed in with current localities), Category:Telshevsky Uyezd and Category:Minsky Uyezd (2nd-level subdivision), Category:Lithuania Governorate (subdivision that lasted 5 years), Category:Ținutul Nistru (existed for 2 years), Category:Belastok Region (short-lived WWII subdivision), Category:Province of Catania (subdivision renamed in 2015), Category:Localities in Western Moldavia (without digging, can't tell whether current or historical subdivision), Category:Province of Westphalia.

Why this RfC? There were some CfD discussions over the years (ones that I am aware Aug 2015 (delete), Sept 2015 (delete), Oct 2015 (no consensus), Apr 2017 (no consensus)) but they did attract much attention (unlike AfD, CfD rarely attracts outsider attention), yielded inconsistent results, and did not hash out what should be done with these categories in general. And these categories keep proliferating. Therefore, looking for a broader principle-based discussion here, rather than individual consideration of specific categories at CfD.

Side note: some locality articles have "historical affiliation" boxes (example: Görlitz#History), though in some others it was removed as "nightmares" or "LISTCRUFT". And a user got blocked for adding them (and refusing to communicate).

Pings to users I came across editing related categories/CfD discussions (some might be inactive): User:Pamrel, User:Sabbatino, user:The-, User:Poeticbent, user:Lekoren, User:Biruitorul, User:Marcocapelle, User:Oculi, User:Peterkingiron, User:RevelationDirect, User:Dahn, User:Carlossuarez46, User:Laurel Lodged, User:Ejgreen77, User:Hugo999, User:Aleksandr Grigoryev, User:Piotrus. Notices posted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories, Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Former countries, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Poland, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Germany, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ukraine, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Romania, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Moldova. Apologies if I missed anyone or any project. Renata (talk) 22:24, 21 February 2020 (UTC) Reply

Opinion poll: Locality categorization by historical subdivisions

Please place your !vote here.

A: definitely should be limited to may be current immediate subdivision and may be the historical in which a populated place was established. For the "historical affiliation" box mentioned above for Gorlitz, it should be avoided as a spam as it simply fails the Manual of Style for flags WP:MOSFLAG and infringes on original research WP:OR due to political speculations. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 22:59, 21 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
Aleksandr Grigoryev: I thought about it, and I don't think it's a workable solution. Many places don't have a specific founding date and they are just mentioned in written sources in year x, or even more broadly in century y. Plus what makes the first subdivision so special? Further, I don't think it's maintainable. If you think about it, it still means that there will have to be categories for all historical subdivisions of that region as localities were founded/mentioned in different times. So, for example, there will have to be a category for Vilnius Voivodeship that contains localities founded/first mentioned in 1413-1795 and for Lidsky Uyezd that contains localities founded/first mentioned in 1795-1915. But then, it's likely that someone will decide that the category on Lidsky Uyezd is not comprehensive and start adding articles purely by geographic location. Renata (talk) 03:15, 24 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
A (Current Subdivision and Historical One at Founding) I'm with Aleksandr above, the current geographical subdivision and the original seems reasonable. So Marseille would be both in the current French subdivision and be noted as a former Greek colony. (I don't want this approach to throw out all historical/former city categories beyond subdivisions though: Category:Former national capitals and Category:Populated places along the Silk Road both seem defining.) RevelationDirect (talk) 00:31, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
C. This is far too broad a question and these things badly need to be determined on a case by case basis. Some of the above shouldn't have locality categorisation in this way. Some of them should. The idea that we can answer them on a global basis with reference to a handful of subdivisions in eastern Europe is the sort of discussion that leads to all kinds of ridiculous situations when applied to local situations in places nobody was giving thought to. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:54, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
The Drover's Wife: not really looking to write any policy here, but just to get a rough idea/consensus from the wider community on what categories should or should not be present in locality articles. It would be very helpful if you could expand on your comment "Some of the above shouldn't have locality categorisation in this way. Some of them should." -- which should (not) and based on what criteria? Even if just considering the examples listed above. Renata (talk) 01:46, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
I am woefully under-educated about the history of this specific region and I'd hate to give pronouncements on things I don't understand well enough to have a sensible opinion. I'm just extremely cautious of a discussion like this creating a rule that then gets applied to completely different circumstances in other places. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:23, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
B (A if we have to): Limited to current subdivisions only, as has been the long established practice; bio articles relevant to the polity itself are also currently placed in the category named for that polity -- it is Category:People of medieval Wallachia, but not Category:People from Saac County (i. e. a defunct county in said Wallachia). This avoids a massive overcrowding. I don't see when populated places would be placed even in articles pertaining to those polities, let alone their subdivisons; only nostalgia and irredentism can be the driving factors here, and neither is encyclopedic. Current subdivision also establishes a neutral standard: populated places that were once in Romania are categorized by their current subdivision in Ukraine, but the same standards would apply to localities in Romania that were once in Hungary. Dahn (talk) 05:46, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
A or B, one could say "A, because we should allow this if a historical subdivision is a defining characteristic of a locality", but in practice it never is a defining characteristic, so A and B are very similar. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:47, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
A. Current and historical are enough. Historical division/subdivision should at least be mentioned in prose before including it. In addition, as already noted by other editor, the "Historical affiliations", including the mentioned problems, should be removed, because it is unsourced, trivial, and just takes up unnecessary space of the page. – Sabbatino (talk) 11:13, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
Sabbatino: Can you clarify which "historical" is enough? All of the examples above are "historical" so you are not actually limiting to anything. Renata (talk) 15:56, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
Country and first level division (governorate, state, province, etc). – Sabbatino (talk) 13:05, 24 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
C I'm with The Drover's Wife on this. It's unwise to make policy decision on such a broad front. Examples can be listed of multiple short-lived political entities to which a city may have been attached over many centuries; it would probably be excessive to make the city a child of all of them. Cities changed hands multiple times in the Holy Roman Empire. On the other hand some administrative sub-divisions, while practically defunct, nevertheless remain on the statute books. For example Thurles (civil parish) is in the ancient barony of Eliogarty. While Eliogarty no longer has a practical administrative function, it has never been legally abolished. I would not like to see Thurles being removed from Category:Eliogarty. In summary, such thingsare best decided on a case-by-case, CFD basis. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:36, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Laurel Lodged: As per your own comment, the barony in question still exists, in some definition, and the first verb in Eliogarty is "is". This is therefore an irrelevant example to this particular discussion, equivalent at best to including cities and towns in their traditional or cultural region. Dahn (talk) 10:03, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
C Per The Drover's Wife above. I believe handling this on a case-by-case basis and category-specific CFDs is the way to go.--Darwinek (talk) 16:01, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Ok, I have narrowed down the geographic focus of the RfC just to Central and Eastern Europe (because that's really where the issues are). Ping to editors who already commented, in case that changes their thoughts: Aleksandr Grigoryev, RevelationDirect, The Drover's Wife, Dahn, Marcocapelle, Sabbatino, Laurel Lodged, Darwinek. Renata (talk) 16:09, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  • No Change in View Based on the limitation of scope to the discussion. RevelationDirect (talk) 19:24, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment - CFD Piecemeal Approach A CFD discussion is just as likely to suggest a global approach as this discussion might suggest a case-by-case approach. The area I have concern with is the subcategories of Category:Districts of East Germany, where we categorize literally every populated place that used to be part of the GDR by former region, which doesn't seem remotely defining to me. If I nominated that tree for deletion, it's likely to come up why I'm not nominating the Lithuania examples Renata provided. Does anyone see a difference between those two examples? RevelationDirect (talk) 19:24, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • I'm not sure why it would come up. It doesn't follow that that what might be appropriate in one situation must be appropriate to another in a completely different geographical, political and historical context because they're both abolished institutions. If you think the German and Lithuanian ones you've both mentioned are equivalent and that they suck, nominating them both is a much better outcome than attempting to make global policy affecting thousands of situations you haven't considered. If you're preferring the few-heads global policy attempt because you think you're going to lose a CfD on the two (I don't know, this is emphatically not my area of knowledge in the world), that should tell you something. The Drover's Wife (talk) 20:23, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • I'm not sure anyone can name a situation when categorizing by past subnational entity would benefit anyone. Mind you, we're not talking about examples such as "Ancient Greek colonies" or "Former capitals of...", none of which actually refer to a subdivision. We are talking about subdivisions for all purposes defunct, and the type of info one would be able to recover from the article and/or a map. Nobody would benefit from having Places in modern-day Turkey grouped under their former Ottoman vilayets, though the article on both the place and the vilayet should include references to one another, at least once theyre both developed. Dahn (talk) 09:59, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
        • ...unless someone was trying to find out what happened to the cities that were once within a particular Ottoman vilayets. I'd expect that to be unusual, but I can imagine it happening (at least for larger cities). (That sounds like a great school assignment: "Pick one of the Ottoman vilayets we've been talking about this week, figure out what it's biggest city was, and find out what's happened to that city since then.") WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
          • @WhatamIdoing:: Except we are not a teaching aide (leaving aside that "go on wikipedia and click two links" isn't really a proper assignment at all). Dahn (talk) 14:02, 1 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
            • Whether it's "proper" is going to depend on the context (e.g., age of the students and whether this is meant to be an important assignment or just a few minutes' homework). I do not say that we have to accommodate that reader. I only say that when billions of people have access to Wikipedia, the odds are high that at least one reader would sincerely appreciate whatever seems unimportant to any given editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:02, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
              • @WhatamIdoing:: The main point is that we're not here to offer that kind of assistance. Dahn (talk) 05:33, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
                • We should be here to provide every type of encyclopedic information. Some of our tools for doing this are pretty awful at the moment (consider, e.g., the necessity of Category:18th-century British women writers, when it'd be better to have a way to record the simple facts of "18th-century", "British", "women", and "writers" and let the software combine them). The same general type of system could be used for geography: Here is the location, and now give me a list of every relevant Wikipedia article. It'd be clunky to do this with just categories, but I hope that in the future, people will be able to look up any the patch of dirt and see all of its history, from well before being absorbed into the Ottoman empire, through the creation of the province/vilayet system, to the end of the Ottoman empire, and what's happened since then. I think that helping people understand history is consistent with our goals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:10, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
                  • @WhatamIdoing: One can understand the point of having women who lived in the 18th century and practiced a certain trade, and were of a certain nationality, in a standalone category, however: the encyclopedic relevance of having articles placed in defunct administrative divisions is entirely unproven, and unargued -- beyond "it would help hypothetical students perform a hypothetical inane assignment with even more ease". What we do have from the above is your hope that we should all embark on this "patch of dirt" pet project (which, btw, is an immense task you unload on anyone writing articles on such topics, without offering them the option to refuse -- since once this is a standard, everyone will be expected to follow it). Instead of simply dreaming of how interesting it would be to have that goal materialized, you could consider that it has no objective use, while demanding a lot of work from "someone else". Dahn (talk) 06:38, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
                    • I don't think so. We already put {{coord}} in articles about geographical areas, and Special:Nearby already lets you find articles within a certain distance of your location. Wikivoyage (and other projects) is using Wikidata, Commons, and/or OpenStreetMap to mark territories (e.g., Alpine County#Communities – the region, not just a single point within it). It doesn't seem impossible to take that existing data and using something similar to Special:Nearby to find all the articles that are within that arbitrary shape, rather than all the articles that are within a certain radius of a single point. None of this would require any extra work from editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I'd go with B, with the usual allowance for exceptions in exceptional cases. This is a classic list role. All the problems that afflict using a category for this information would disappear if using a list. A list is also much easier to maintain and add any necessary qualifiers to (as might be needed for example if administrative boundaries shifted during the relevant historical period). As a bonus, a list is also much more likely to attract the attention of contributors with relevant historical expertise. I can see no reason why the approach would be different from one geographical area to the next; the arguments with respect to Central and Eastern Eurperiodically I ope would seem to apply equally well in any other geographical context. -- Visviva (talk) 04:33, 24 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • C. I'm not sure why this is such a contentious issue. If the town existed in the past as part of a former subdivision, why would it be inappropriate to note that? It actually sounds fairly useful; if I were trying to find out what was the extent of and former municipalities in, such-and-such of a now-defunct province, the categorization of places into such categories seems like a natural way to do that. --Jayron32 18:53, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • @Jayron32: Because it adds a million categories that could be simply replaced by lists in/alongside articles, and because it serves no purpose other than to satisfy dreams of lost glory? Dahn (talk) 14:04, 1 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I'm leaning C (no particular rules). I'm not sure that every little village that was once part of the Roman empire should be categorized that way, but Vienna was the capital of multiple empires/nations, and it seems odd to limit its categorization to only the most recent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • C. Should be treated case-by case basis, and the text must support categorization, with valid refs. In fact it is often important to know who belong where at a particular time, and periodically I am thinking about adding a kind of timeline template to articles about locations. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:07, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • C (A if we have to): Definitely not B. When talking specifically about Central and Eastern Europe, some places actually have more connection to their former subdivision in terms of historical importance than their current one, so it would be strange not to categorize them by their former subdivision. Ejgreen77 (talk) 11:43, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Ejgreen77: can you give an example of "some places actually have more connection to their former subdivision"? Renata (talk) 18:21, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • A/C Some of these categorisations (and not only for former east European areas, it goes for the whole of the world) are utterly confusing (at least in my opinion). There are objects that are categorised by current areas where the organisation never existed in that current area (organisations (in the most broad sense of the word) that have been discontinued well before the current area where they would have been if the organisation still existed existed (intentionally confusing sentence)). I had to look, but 1962 Northern Rhodesian general election was once categorised in Category:1962 in Zambia where Northern Rhodesia was renamed in 1964 to Zambia (this one has since been fixed: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 June 18#1935 establishments in Zambia; however, there is still Category:Elections in Zambia on the article ...). Within the volatility of the 'countries' in Europe in the past, there are many cases where things happen to an organisation while they are in A, then country changes to B and something else happens, country changes again, to C, and they stop existing, and if they would now still have existed they would now be in D ... Categorisation in these cases should be limited (A) and well thought through (which is basically what should happen now: C). --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:24, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • C I'm with User:Staszek Lem on this one: if referenced text in the article supports the historic categorization (and thus it's presumably appropriate text that does not violate WP:UNDUE), then the cat should stay. But if no referenced article text supports the category, then the categorization is the result of original research and should be removed. UnitedStatesian (talk) 19:16, 6 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Unarchived to request closure at WP:ANRFC. Cunard (talk) 00:58, 5 April 2020 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Is it time to place greater restrictions on AfD?

Latest comment: 3 years ago130 comments58 people in discussion

Deletion discussions remain one of the most hotly controversial parts of the project, but the bar for participation is lower than most other controversial parts of the project.

Bad faith nominations are a common form of harassment or POV-pushing, and while such nominations are rarely successful, there are no protections in place to prevent it from taking a toll on the victim (in cases of harassment) or taking a large amount of volunteer time (for harassment or for POV-pushing). Starting a deletion nominated currently requires autoconfirmed status (4 days + 10 edits).

Once the nomination is started, it's common for people associated with the subject to use social media channels to influence the discussion (whether to support or oppose deletion). New users who sign up just to advocate a position in a deletion discussion rarely take the time to familiarize themselves with Wikipedia's deletion-related policies and guidelines, leading to large numbers of low quality !votes that complicate discussions. In very rare cases, after discussions are already severely affected by canvassing, we semi-protect them. Canvassing creates a lot of drama, rarely helps a deletion discussion, and wastes a huge amount of time and energy.

Is it time to place greater restrictions on AfD? Three inter-related questions for the community. Please note that this is not a proposal, but a discussion to see if a proposal makes sense.

1. Should there be stricter requirements to start a deletion discussion?

2. Should deletion discussions be semi-protected by default?

3. If yes to either of the above, what is the best way to allow new users to participate productively (for example, using AfD talk pages)?

— Rhododendrites talk \\ 22:10, 9 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

Discussion (AfD restrictions)

  • Some context for why I started this thread: For years I've participated at AfD and have seen the problems caused by canvassing over and over again. So question #2 has long been on my mind.
    What has me thinking about question #1 took place over the weekend: a Wikipedian created an illegitimate sock puppet for the sole purpose of nominating for deletion three related articles: Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, Corina Newsome, and Earyn McGee. It's not the first time I've seen people use AfD to nominate groups of related articles in bad faith, nor the first time I've seen it used to to target biographies of women or people of color in particular. It didn't take long to cause a stir on Twitter, etc., perceived as yet another example of systemic bias on Wikipedia.
    Of course, those of us insiders know that this was actually an example of process working in the end -- that this was just one illegitimate sock puppet causing trouble, and the articles had little chance of being deleted because it's "not a vote" and whatnot. Here's the thing, though: it's still damaging. Bad faith nominations are not only a huge time sink to the community, requiring people to make sure process does win out; it's also a terrible experience for the article creator/editors, it's a terrible experience for the article subject, and it's a terrible experience for anyone else who looks in and cannot be expected to see what we see. They see Wikipedia working on deleting a topic they care about, and cannot be expected to understand the "don't worry, it's not a vote, and process will win out" part that we might say to ourselves while grumbling.
    So I, for one, do think it's time to raise the bar a bit. How much to raise it is the big question as far as I'm concerned. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 22:10, 9 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
On the last two of those, unless I'm missing something, that was an empty nomination ? I would say that admins should feel empowered to close empty or bad faith nominations, especially if they believe they may draw external involvement (Which should be taken as a given for any BLP for anyone of an underpresented minority on WP). If an experienced editor believes the article does merit deletion, let them open a fresh deletion discussion with proper rational (and there should be no penalty here if that's opened even the same day as the rapid closure of the previous one). We may not catch all the bad faith ones, if they are nominated with a reasonable cause (as the first of your three appears to be on a first quick read), but at least we shouldn't let the clear bad ones linger for the 7 required days and cause long term problems --Masem (t) 22:26, 9 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Right. Like I said, process usually wins out, but why is this permitted to begin with? How often do you see successful, good faith, policy-based nominations from new users, as compared to the kind of problems caused in this example? How many of those positive examples could be handled through other means (e.g. requesting an AfD at WT:AFD, PROD, etc.)? My central point about question #1 is about new users' nominations being a net negative, and that the negative effects probably reach further than most people would think, because we tend to think of AfDs as being behind-the-scenes projectspace business. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 22:32, 9 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
I think the deep problem is identifying bad faith nominations. I worry that closing empty nominations is not a robust solution to the problem, because it doesn't take much for disruptive editors to learn how to give the appearance of a rationale. Just quickly looking back over the (all presumably good faith) AfDs I've participated in this year, the modal deletion rationale is typically one sentence along the lines of "This article does not meet the notability guidelines", and (very reasonably) nobody blinks an eye when that's written by an editor with a few hundred edits who stacked a dozen pages in AfD in one afternoon with identical rationales -- most of the time, that sort of deletion is just a user who spent a few hours helping to build the encylopedia by patrolling for non-notable pages, and decided they found several. So I worry that resting everything on an idea like "admins should delete any rapid string of AfDs by a new editor with empty/totally trivial deletion rationales" just moves the problem to a question of how to tell the difference between good faith (but perhaps rather lazy) tagging on the one hand, and disruptive trolling on the other. In this situation, for example, it seems reasonable to guess that with a bit more effort the person who started this AfD might have been able to write a persuasive appearance of a sincere deletion rationale, since they openly admitted to being a sockpuppet during the AfD (as was noted at AN). And that same AfD but with a policy-motivated deletion rationale would still have been subject to all the same canvassing, spam, and trolling. - Astrophobe (talk) 23:06, 9 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Empty nominations are easy. And given that most experienced editors know of the BEFORE process and how to nominate, I could see that when we have a sub-par nomination (no sign of prior research, maybe just claimed "person is non-notable", and a quick check of the target AFD page shows 20+ sources with clear reliable sources being used, they can do this rapid close and add something in their close "Any experienced editor, believing this was a valid AFD, may reopen/restart this". Heck, that's even better, just have the rapid close if the admin thinks it is a bad faith AFD, but if an experienced editor thinks it is valid, they can ask to have the nomination opened again on the admin's talk page, mimicking the process one uses to question the standard admin closure process.--Masem (t) 23:49, 9 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Masem and Astrophobe: we need to be more nuanced instead of immediately calling this a "bad faith nomination" just because the nominator chose a sock-puppet account rather than their established Wikipedia identity. As someone who has recently been singled-out and targeted by a right-wing website for my involvement in blacklisting The Epoch Times, I can understand why someone wanted to shield themselves from the backlash of a self-righteous Twitter mob crying racism and sexism. --bender235 (talk) 13:57, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
I would never base a "bad faith nom" on the basis of the account only, unless I know that editor has some type of block/warning or the like specific on using AFD in that topic area or in general. (eg, someone that I know has a AP2 DS on them that they are not to make any edits in that area, and they nominate a topic clearly in the AP2 topic area, that's a bad faith). Barring knowledge of that, the only assessment of "bad faith" is the nature of the nomination and the actual sate of the page - is there a massive disconnect that indicates that this may be a POINTy or nonsense AFD that AFD doesn't need to waste its time with. I agree we should not judge the editor - IP, new editor, or experienced - otherwise in evaluating whether an AFD is good or bad faith normally. --Masem (t) 14:07, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
That is good to know, but I felt like having to emphasize it because the general conclusion in WP:ANB seems to have been along the lines of "three AfDs were started by sockpuppets accounts with a vengeance," i.e. not worth being taken seriously (I'm quoting Silver_seren specificly, but it was more or less the general opinion). --bender235 (talk) 16:20, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
I mean, if this solution I suggest is implemented, and one finds that a single user has been submitting several AFDs in a row that have been quick closed as these bad faith noms and suspects possible sock activity, by all mean then check to see if the editor is a sock. But the editor should not be pre-judged outside of any known DS/bans attached specifically to that editor's name if we all for evaluating bad faith noms. --Masem (t) 16:28, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • First off, I would be against semi-protection by default because many articles listed for deletion are from new editors, and they should be able to participate in the deletion discussions of their articles. While this doesn't always wind up for the best, I imagine locking them out of the discussion or bunting them to an unseen talk page would have even worse outcomes. However, I would be in favor of raising the bar for filing a deletion to extended confirmed, as virtually all new page patrollers will meet that standard easily, and it will create a significantly higher hurdle for bad-faith actors. This won't stop PROD or CSD tagging - but that's a feature, not a bug. Both are easily removed in cases of abuse, and let people that are not extended confirmed and still want to help address the worst new articles. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 23:03, 9 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • This is a good point. I actually intended to be less specific than "semi-protection by default" in order to allow for that one exception (article creators/editors weighing in), but forgot when it came time to hit save. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:35, 9 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Thanks for starting this discussion Rhododendrites, and I think it's worth reinforcing that this problem of targeted and high-profile bad faith deletion spam is not at all new, and that with the growth of conversations about Wikipedia across other major platforms, I expect this sort of canvassing to only grow more severe. Per the opening paragraph of the discussion and per The Squirrel Conspiracy, I expect that I would agree with a proposal to require a higher bar to begin AfDs. But requiring a higher bar to contribute to AfDs is, to my mind, much more complicated. On the one hand, I am really sympathetic to the argument that it would be dangerously discouraging to new editors. I remember vividly my early experience editing Wikipedia: I believed that about   of whatever you do on this website will get rapidly undone for completely opaque reasons, with lots of giant paragraphs full of incomprehensible acronyms and links and all sorts of emphatic italics about how astonishingly bone-headed you must have been to write that content (I'm not saying that's the impression people were trying to give, just that that's how it often feels to very new editors). People absolutely should be encouraged to WP:BB from their very first edit, including writing pages from scratch, and if their page comes up for deletion they should be allowed to participate in the discussion on it. From personal experience I believe that good faith participation in AfDs by brand new editors who don't yet have a clue is a huge net good for the project, especially as a hugely important (if often unpleasant) learning experience for them. Nothing motivates you to wade deep into notability policy like trying to come up with an argument for why your afternoon of work shouldn't be undone. Having said all of that, not raising the bar for AfD participation leaves half of the problem we're talking about unaddressed: it means that canvassing good faith and constructive deletion discussions is still just as easy, whether you're trying to sway the discussion towards keep or delete. It's very easy to imagine a good faith editor questioning the value of a page about someone with tens of thousands of twitter followers and that person reacting by canvassing support, just as happened in this instance, in which case we would be in the same exact position that we're in now. So I would be very interested in discussing further policies that would allow people with a sincere connection to the page to participate, while ruling out the kind of canvassing that is already a very serious problem and that looks like it will only get more serious over the next few months and years. - Astrophobe (talk) 23:44, 9 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I honestly don't see it as a problem. Most of the time canvassing is obvious and the topics are notable. I actually got stuck into the project because I wasn't specifically canvassed, but I read something about whether something should be on Wikipedia off of Wikipedia. Not being able to participate may create a "walled garden" effect for the entire community. That being said, there is a bad faith nomination issue, it was obvious in the cases you mentioned, and we need to do a better job of a community of not defaulting to "no consensus" when a deletion discussion goes off the canvassing rails, but I don't really support increasing the standard threshold. For instance, this should be very unlikely, but there may be instances where a low profile BLP realises there's an attack page written about them here and needs to deal with it. I might be willing to support a specific action item, though, such as a flag when a non-extended confirmed user starts an AfD. SportingFlyer T·C 01:47, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I would oppose these type of changes. Its hard enough to delete an article as it is. Think about it, it only takes one person to create a bad article, but many to have it deleted. And when we can't agree and the AfD is closed as "no consensus", it gets kept by default. This actually contradicts WP:ONUS where the person adding the material must get consensus, not the person proposing deletion. As for sockpuppets, that is not a issue exclusive to AfDs. They can show up in any discussion anywhere.--Rusf10 (talk) 02:07, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • can show up in any discussion anywhere sure, but in structured discussions they can be more disruptive. it's also a place where it's much less likely they'll be able to contribute positively. in an article talk page, there's at least an argument from the perspective of knowing the subject; arguing about notability is a bit more, well, technical from a procedural standpoint. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Right, canvassing for keeps is a huge problem. And isn't that what Rhododendrites's suggested point 2 addresses? The way I read it, the problem you describe is a big motivation for that remedy. - Astrophobe (talk) 04:52, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    I would even equate off-line canvassing by a subject or by a connected contributor to COI editing. Point 2 of the proposal would not take care of the issue (most of these accounts were autoconfirmed, just dormant), and probably has zero chances to pass at any RfC anyway.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:51, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Bender, are you suggesting that the three articles in question should have been deleted? That they are "Wikipedia shrine[s] for their personal vanity" in your book? Axem Titanium (talk) 07:39, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I do agree with you that offline canvassing is essentially just COI editing. What I do not think is clearly true that most of the accounts in the recent spate of canvassed AfDs were autoconfirmed editors -- look at the two rapidly closed (and therefore actually readable) AfDs at Corina Newsome and Earyn McGee. Both of them were absolutely overrun by IPs and single-purpose accounts. It's easy enough to say that the suggestion as written here so far wouldn't perfectly solve the problem or is pretty much guaranteed to fail at RfC, both of which I agree with. More interesting is asking how we can tweak AfD to make it robust to these sorts of multi-front attacks from the outside, which have already been seriously disruptive and I believe will only grow more severe. It could very well be that the answer is there is no possible reform and we just have to live with this issue, but I don't think that's possible to conclude without some more discussion. - Astrophobe (talk) 08:14, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I think if every instance of canvassing on twitter would result in a COI template appearing on top of the article, and potentially in an appearance of a paragraph explaining how he subject was canvassing on twitter then they will start thinking twice before starting canvassing. I agree that semi-protecting AfD would generally help (though not entirely) to this issue, however, it is not really desired from other points of view, and this discussion so far shows a clear opposition to this proposal. In addition, I have no idea what to do if (i) a Wikipedia editor canvasses other sympatheric Wikipedia editors outside Wikipedia (which happend a lot and in the past resulted in keeping clearly non-notable articles) and (ii) people are showing upat AfD and it is clear that they are correlated but the source of canvassing could be found. --Ymblanter (talk) 10:02, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • The really harmful perception that encourages canvassing seems to be that it's a straight up or down vote that everyone in the world has an inherent right to participate in. We already have Template:Not a ballot, but it's clearly highly ignorable for motivated people. I wonder if there is a template that is garish and intimidating enough to actually persuade people that canvassed votes won't work. Maybe a pop-up like some web sites have to discourage ad blockers, and an mp3 that autoplays a siren noise when you load the page ;) - Astrophobe (talk) 18:31, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • @Astrophobe: as Ymblanter correctly pointed out, a lot of the Wikipedians canvassed to those AfDs were inactive but established accounts. A rule limiting the participation of newly created accounts therefore wouldn't help. Of course, generally restricting sporadically active Wikipedians for !voting isn't a viable solution, either. After all, we are a project of volunteers and clearly not everybody finds time and means to contribute on a regular basis. It's just that in those particular three AfDs the canvassing was so blatantly obvious, with person after person basically copy-pasting the same rational referencing the rarely cited WP:BASIC over and over again. When I was looking for fellow veteran Wikipedians to intervene on the evening when all of this unfolded, Sulfurboy reassured me that "any admin worth their salt will see past meat and spa votes." Unfortunately that never happened. --bender235 (talk) 13:05, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • As I see it, there are two separate issues. One is people who have (almost-)never used Wikipedia before, who have no investment whatsoever in the site, either being unaware of our rules about things like canvassing and COI or having no reason to care about them. Anecdotally I think this is one of the most far-reaching problems confronting Wikipedia. I know that when I've tried to explain things like "you shouldn't write a page for your dad" to people in my life who don't edit here, the most common response is something along the lines of: nobody cares about Facebook's terms of service or Twitter's terms of service or The New York Times's terms of service, why should I care about Wikipedia's terms of service? It's easy to imagine that a bunch of the first-time editors who were canvassed into that discussion would tell you that the principle they were following in voting keep is more noble than abiding by Wikipedia's policies would be. That's the issue that I think there's room to fix. The second, separate, issue is people who actually are editors here, or who have been active editors in the past, who may or may not be breaking COI/Canvassing rules. I'm not interested in accusing anyone of anything so I'll just assume for the moment that is a problem that exists in the abstract. It's hard to imagine a policy-based solution to that problem other than sanctioning the user, because if somebody has an investment in the website and is ignoring policy anyways, then I definitely agree that we shouldn't adopt a suboptimal global policy to handle that; we have a whole other set of rules for user misbehaviour. So I see the former as worth trying to fix with a policy change, and the latter as just a matter of users breaking rules and all the various policies we have to deal with that. - Astrophobe (talk) 18:47, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • XfD is already biased too heavily towards indiscriminate inclusionism. We smile benevolently on keep vote canvassing, and allow personal attacks on nominators to pass without comment. Now here is a proposal to skew the conversation even further away from discussion of article subjects and contents and further towards lawyerly rules about who is allowed to talk. I am not in favour. Reyk YO! 08:42, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure I've ever seen an indiciation of AfD being a hotbed of indiscriminate inclusionism, nor indeed community encouragement (or at least, lack of notice or reticence) on canvassing of Keep votes. Nosebagbear (talk)
This suggests that there are areas where pretty much everything nominated gets kept, does not matter whether or not material is compliant with WP:GNG. Not that I strongly oppose this, and in some areas (such as localities) it probably makes sense, but this definitely backs up the inclusionism claims.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:51, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Well, by its nature XfD tends to attract pages that ought to be deleted so in that sense it leans towards deletionism. But what I mean is that the lenience we show to misbehaving editors correlates directly with whether they voted keep. For instance, I once objected when some pretty blatant keep vote canvassing was allowed to determine the outcome of an AfD/DRV. All I got in response was blank looks and a (hopefully not serious) suggestion to counter-canvass if it bothered me so much. That's not advice I intend to take because, even if I felt like being unethical, a delete voter could never get away with it. I could give other examples of keep voters free to make insulting personal commentary and delete voters getting in trouble for backchat but of course if I did it would only be dismissed as a list of personal grievances. Reyk YO! 10:26, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
I could understand this position regarding #1, but #2 is much more likely to apply to canvassed keep !votes than canvassed delete !votes (at least in my experience). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Call me a cynic if you like, but I don't see that ever being enforced consistently. Reyk YO! 12:22, 14 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • So, I get both the base concern(s), but also the issue with SP - that the creator in particular is disadvantaged. On the thought of Extended-Confirmed to start an AfD - does anyone know what % of good-faith AfDs are started by non-EC users? That seems relevant here. It's a shame we don't have PC2 - this would be a great area for it. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:44, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • AfD needs improvement, for certain. Some kind of competency requirement for nominating articles could help, so could a quicker closing process for bad nominations. Unfortunately, it's hard for me to come up with a good way of accomplishing...Jacona (talk) 12:58, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • AFD will never be perfect and it is 100x more "friendly" than it was 10 years ago. Participation is lower as well. I see no benefit to suppressing participation any further and that is what more rules will do. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:48, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • This would be solved if we had more mechanical and less subjective notability rules. Then it wouldn't matter who was being canvassed. We should repeal WP:N altogether and just amend WP:V to require two independent, in depth, reliable secondary sources for every article. Then AFDs will just be about whether there are two qualifying sources or not. If there are, it can have a stand alone page. If there aren't, no stand alone page. Simple and no need to discuss whether or not something is "notable". No SNGs to argue about. Basically, make GNG a hard policy and be done with it. Levivich [dubious – discuss] 16:21, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • We've seen editors try to work with more mechanical/objective application of notability "rules" , claiming things like "I have three sources, that's enough", but this makes things worse because now you have people gaming the system worse than what we see now. Also, this underminds the purpose of notability on WP, which is to reflect topics that are likely to be able to be fleshed out to fuller articles but need sourcing work to help get there, and because we have no DEADLINE, require the flexibility of judging what sourcing exists at AFD rather than rote rules to keep them. --Masem (t) 16:34, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • @Levivich: I disagree, because that would only further muddy the distinction between what's verifiable and what's notable. Those two are not the same, and while the existence of reliable sources (i.e., verifiable facts) is necessary for someone or something to be notable, they aren't sufficient. --bender235 (talk) 16:50, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Going to echo Masem here and agree that this would be susceptible to gaming the system. Axem Titanium (talk) 16:57, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • @Masem, Bender235, and Axem Titanium: Thanks for your comments. To clarify, I am indeed proposing something radical: far more than "blurring the lines" between V and N, I'm talking about getting rid of that line altogether. That's why I'm not worried about "the purpose of notability", because I advocate getting rid of the entire concept of "notability". Let's face facts: 6,000,000 articles, and they're not all about important topics. We have hundreds of thousands of articles about athletes, songs, Pokemon characters, and all the rest. If the purpose of notability is to reflect topics that are likely to be fleshed out, well, then WP:N has failed miserably at that purpose.
        It's the entire concept of "notability" that is to blame: the notion that a topic has some property, "notable", that determines whether or not it should be in the encyclopedia, and we, as editors, are tasked with examining the topic and determining if it has this property or not. We act like notability is something we discover. It's not. It's something we invent. "Notability" is whatever we say it is; literally, whatever we agree to write at WP:N. If the purpose is to identify topics that can be fully fleshed out, there is no better way to do that than to identify if there are two good sources that we can use in the article. If there are two good sources, we can write an article about it that complies with V, NPOV, and NOR. If there aren't, we can't. This is the principle behind GNG, WP:THREE, WP:42, etc.
        We should embrace the fact that an AFD is not about a topic's inherent property of notability, but really just about whether to have a stand-alone page or not. We should have a stand alone page if we have the sources to support it. By making the "notability" simply a matter of "sufficient available sourcing: yes or no" and not about anything else, it will be harder, not easier, to game. Every keep !vote, to "count", would have to identify the two sources, and the entire discussion would be about whether the two sources meet WP:GNG criteria. The current system is already being gamed, and has been gamed, for a long time. Gaming is what led to this thread in the first place. Restricting the conversation to just be about the quality of sourcing and nothing else, will lead to less gaming, nor more. Levivich [dubious – discuss] 17:30, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
        • @Levivich: that's a radical idea, to put it mildly, and I'm afraid that completely eliminating the notion and threshold of notability would turn Wikipedia into somewhat of a repository for everything that was ever written, and every person that ever existed. I mean, I might be able to find a census entry and a birth announcement (two reliable sources!) of some 19th-century John Smith of Iowa, but what's the point of writing up an article recounting his dull biography of plowing the corn field from the cradle to the grave? At some point we have to be firm and say Wikipedia is just not the place for this. --bender235 (talk) 17:39, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
          Bender235, 6,000,000 articles says to me that Wikipedia already is a repository for everything that was ever written. Please note that I didn't say "two reliable sources", I said "two independent, in-depth, reliable secondary sources" (in other words, same as WP:GNG), so no, a census entry and birth announcement wouldn't cut it. Requiring two GNG sources for every article will reduce, not increase, the number of stand-alone pages. Of this much, I'm sure. What makes my proposal radical is that if it were implemented, millions of articles would be eligible for deletion, which are not currently eligible for deletion, because meeting GNG isn't currently universally seen as a requirement. Levivich [dubious – discuss] 17:57, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
          @Bender235: (sorry for the multiple pings), as one concrete example, under "my" suggested system, this AFD would have resulted in "delete" because there aren't two qualifying sources. Levivich [dubious – discuss] 18:27, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
          No matter how you slice it, WP:PROF almost certainly needs to remain a standalone rule. Many academics are worth having an article written about them despite never having appeared in a newspaper. Significant coverage in secondary sources is not a requirement; merely having one's research (a primary source, albeit a reliable one due to peer review) cited heavily by other papers is sufficient to meet the bar. And we can write an article on their work using mostly those primary sources, with the reassurance that they are reliable because they have been thoroughly vetted by the academic community. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:01, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
          King of Hearts, if we did this, I would support having exceptions (specifically to the "independent" and "secondary" requirements), including PROF exception, as well as for other specific areas where there is a lack of independent or secondary sourcing, but where the community feels non-independent or non-secondary sourcing is nonetheless reliable enough to satisfy V.
          Instead of asking, at an AFD, "is it notable?", we ask, "is there enough verifiable information to support a stand-alone page?" A statement, to be verified, needs to come from a reliable source (a source with a reputation for accuracy), it needs to come from an independent source (or else there's a bias concern, usually), and it needs to come from a secondary source (to avoid OR interpretation of primary sources). For an entire page to be verified (or in other words, for a topic to be verified), we also need in-depth sources: enough content to fill a page.
          Even if the community adopts this view of verification, it can still decide that there are some topics, like PROF, where a "reliable source" need not be independent or secondary, and so exceptions could be made. This is also the sort of exception that could be made to address under-coverage of historically marginalized people and topics. Thinking of whether to have a stand-alone page as a matter of V instead of N is a better framework all around. And then, in AfD discussions, the only keep !vote that would count would look like "keep - [source 1] [source 2]", and it wouldn't matter if people were canvassed or IP editors or socks or whatever, because instead of counting votes, or assessing votes, we would just be counting sources and confirming that they meet "the test" and that there's two of them. Levivich [dubious – discuss] 20:26, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • I agree with those who argue that an uninterpreted WP:V is not enough of a basis for deletion policy, but I agree that notability has not served us well. The problem that deletion policy is there to solve is that there are forces out there that aim to undermine the encyclopedia, so we need to choose the ground that we can defend. The notability criterion is a solution: it says the topics we should have articles for are those on which good articles could be written. I have thought since 2006 this is wrong: the criterion we should apply is maintainability, not notability, and we should deal with articles as they are, not as they might be (although I am all for editors who transform bad articles into good ones during the AfD process). The events that convinced me of this led to this AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Schwartz (journalist), an example of something then unmaintainable that I thought should have been deleted, although the subject was notable. More recently I have been bothered by how the WP:INHERIT criterion has frequently been used to delete high-quality, well-maintained, encyclopediac content; cf. Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 June 8 for the most recent example I aware of; there are have been better exmples. We should drop the abstract ideal of notability as the criterion we use and adopt the pragmatic criterion of maintainability that I think in time would lead to a more intuitive deletion policy. — Charles Stewart (talk) 06:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Speaking as a proud simpleton who loves hyper-minimalist rules, I would support this, but it seems like a different (though of course related) proposal. - Astrophobe (talk) 18:37, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I think one of the issues is that AFD, unlike a lot of other Wikipedia processes we think of as happening "in the background", slaps a big red notice on top of an article in articlespace. I'm not suggesting that we change this at all, but it is worth keeping this fact in mind when we discuss solutions. The notice demands your attention when you're on an article and even invites you (yes, you!) to participate in the deletion discussion. You can imagine that a new/IP user would feel confused if they're not allowed to participate at all at this point. Axem Titanium (talk) 16:57, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    If a change were made, we could update the template accordingly. Levivich [dubious – discuss] 18:02, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    This is a good point, thanks. If we enacted some sort of restriction like this, at very least the wording of that notice should be changed, but I'm not sure in what way. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    I'm sure that banner is responsible for a good chunk of the hollow "keep" votes that show up for pop-culture articles. It stands to reason that if you're looking up the article for a particular thing, you beleive that particular thing should have an article. (Even if there's no particular policy-based reason for it to.) ApLundell (talk) 14:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Personally I would support automatically adding extended confirmed protection (30 days/500 edits) to all AfDs as they are created. Positive contributions from editors not meeting these criteria are incredibly rare IMO, and it would stop SPAs, socks, IPs called from social media etc. Number 57 17:46, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    I agree with this suggestion. Article creators who are not EC can make their case on the talk page (along with other non-EC editors). EC editors can read those talk page arguments and take them into consideration in their AFD !votes. The closer can also take into consideration arguments made on the talk page. But it'll help keep the discussion more focused if only EC editors participated on the AFD page. Frankly, non-EC editors do not have the experience necessary to meaningfully contribute at an AFD, even if they wrote the article. And I say this as an editor who participated in AFDs before I was EC (and I shouldn't have, because I had no understanding of notability guidelines then [or now really]). Levivich [dubious – discuss] 18:01, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I would like to see some facts here. How many AFDs in the past month/year can we reasonably classify as being disruptive in the senses concerned in this proposal? I would say that if that number is less than 5 or 10%, I don't see a need for systemic change. --Izno (talk) 18:13, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • What happened in the AfDs mentioned above is being repeated at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone now. What happens on Wikipedia doesn't stay on Wikipedia. With every AfD like this, someone on Twitter will be more emboldened to post their vanity shrine on Wikipedia. EC protection will really help in cases like that. TryKid [dubious – discuss] 22:21, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Will editors who are not admins be able to nominate articles for deletion? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:52, 10 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Under these suggestions anyone who is extended confirmed could nominate AFDs. Personally I would support limiting nominations and participation to extended confirmed users and the article creator because it would give more time to block the sockpuppets who seem to zero in at AFD whether they are nominating or voting, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 00:20, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
I agree with Atlantic306. Mccapra (talk) 12:01, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Under normal circumstances I think our AfD process works fine and don't need adjustment - usually no or minimal disruption and no need to protect the AfD until something problematic happens. For example, I recently dealt with an case where an article creator was blocked during an AfD of their article and suddenly brand-new accounts showed up to !vote. SPI, checkuser, semi-protected just because of the sockpuppetry, bam - dealt with. What we need to have a process for is cases like these, which are the exception rather than the rule - demonstrable and widespread off-wiki canvassing that turns the AfD into chaos (a flood of mostly-new users using non-policy-based arguments). I think semi-protection is the right call in most cases, but what do we do if there's demonstrable canvassing of experienced editors, for example? creffett (talk) 00:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Some of the examples listed above are quite extraordinary, I agree with bender235 that “something” needs to be done before this becomes the normal. Whilst it would not deal with bad-faith nominations and canvassed inactive users, perhaps upon presentation of evidence of off-Wiki advocacy, !votes be restricted to extended confirmed users and !votes already cast by non-XCON users be struck/deleted. Cavalryman (talk) 03:42, 11 June 2020 (UTC).Reply
  • @Cavalryman: actually what upset me the most in these Twitter canvassing campaigns is the piggybacking on a social justice cause. People weren't just told to vouch for the notability of some hashtag activists, they were sent here to fight supposedly systematic sexism and racism in Wikipedia and its entire community (see [1], [2], [3]). And sure enough the majority of canvassed !voters came waltzing in crying racism right away without even bothering to consider the arguments presented up to this point. That's what concerns me the most. Apart from slandering the Wikipedia community unjustly, it makes certain subjects and topics toxic to a point where our usual (bureaucratic) processes can no longer be applied. Who wants to be the Wikipedian permanently branded as a racist in the Twitterverse simply for questioning the notability of a social media starlet? The nominator of AfD/Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman stated that he/she created a sock puppet rather than use his/her established account to avoid online harassment, and perusing the comments and replies of the self-righteous Twitter mob above, I don't think that was a stretch. To me, this whole incident and its likely future copy-cat versions are worrisome. (And just to show that I am not exaggerating, here is a now-deleted tweet by MethanoJen singling me out by name, simply for questioning whether her newly created Category:Black geoscientists doesn't fit our existing category pattern.) --bender235 (talk) 16:39, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    Please write to T&S about the tweet, this is a cleart wiki-harassment. I have warned her in the morning (qand may be this is why the tweet has been deleted), but if I have seen this I might have indeffed.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:41, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
bender235, I agree completely, aside from the utterly appalling conduct of that editor the broader trend in identity politics is to brand anyone who presents a rational and articulate counterpoint a racist/bigot/Nazi etc, thankfully not a common issue in the dog articles I tend to edit and to be honest one of the reasons I usually give anything political on Wikipedia a very wide berth. I tend towards supporting the idea of BLUELOCK for AfD discussions (less article creators), I suspect SILVERLOCK would be no impediment. One of the reasons I proposed a middle ground above is to protect closers from the inevitable social media targeting that would follow from a close that went against canvassed IP & SPA opinion. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 22:48, 11 June 2020 (UTC).Reply
  • Wikipedia has already strayed too far from being the encyclopedia anyone can edit. Keeping that in mind, further restrictions on editing abilities for newer users should only be implemented when absolutely necessary. I think our admins are pretty good at recognizing canvassing and meatpuppetry by SPAs and the like. Since AfD isn't a vote, closing admins are expected to throw out !votes that are frivolous and/or not based in our policies and guidelines. Even if that weren't possible, I'm not convinced it happens often enough to justify such drastic action. We also have to consider the effect this would have on editor retention. Wikipedia is already confusing enough to newbies, with its byzantine policies, litany of jargony acronyms, and Kafkaesque bureaucracy-that-isn't-a-bureaucracy. I'm convinced this would be a net negative. AfD has far more pressing concerns to deal with anyway. The biggest two that come to mind are careless nominations where WP:BEFORE clearly didn't happen (especially wrt non-English sources), and nationalistic or politically motivated bloc voting by established editors. Established editors know how to make their !vote look like a valid policy-based rationale even when their real motivations are ILIKEIT/IDONTLIKEIT. Freshly recruited meatpuppets don't know how to do this, and so closing admins can safely disregard them per WP:NOTAVOTE. In particularly extreme cases, admins should semi-protect the page as they sometimes do now. That's far better than the current proposal which throws the baby out with the bathwater. −−− Cactus Jack 🌵 05:11, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • While I appreciate the argument on principle, I don't know if being an encyclopedia that anyone can edit is the same as being "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and anyone can jump into the behind-the-encyclopedia technical processes without spending time learning about them first". As for WP:BEFORE, I don't necessarily disagree; don't you think that requiring more experience would make it more likely that someone is familiar with (and follows) that guidance? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • We need to remember that AFD is just one of our deletion processes, if we were to restrict people from filing AFDs we shouldn't be surprised if they tag more articles for Speedy deletion or simply draftify them. That said I'm OK with the idea that we restrict some people from deletion generally. Over the years I have seen a number of editors who didn't realise they were overly deletionist until they ran an RFA and had their deletion tagging checked and criticised. So I would be OK with 6 month bans from the deletion process where people were only allowed to participate in the deletion process re articles that they had started. I really really don't like the idea of restricting people from a deletion debate where it is their work that we are considering deleting. So restrict the people who have been making mistakes in their deletion tagging, not a blanket restriction on new or newish editors. ϢereSpielChequers 13:32, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I don't know how we've escalated past the early suggestions of SP for participation to ECP, which is seriously, seriously OTT. While their average edit quality is certainly worse, I've seen many legitimate !votes from editors in that group. Shifting to talk page for all of them brings multiple issues: that's fiddly to spot, so some just won't note to participate there (that is, they'll know the TP exists, but not that they'll be read) & also massively drops that chances that every person in the AfD will read the !votes or comments, which disrupts and weights the discussion inappropriately. We also should be using the least disruptive method, and disrupted AfDs are relatively rare. We aren't implementing a "have more experienced participation" restriction. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:49, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • AfD is infested with socks. You can see it with old AfDs (a few years back) and seeing how many participants have a strike-through (with that userscript installed). They get busted eventually, somewhere else, and leave behind fossil evidence. I would support reasonable moves to address this problem. -- GreenC 16:51, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Yes, there is a problem, but it is only a problem with a very small percentage of AfD discussions. Far more discussions have the problem of a lack of participation, which this proposal would only exacerbate. Maybe we need to encourage people to be less tolerant of canvassing, or of other abuses of this process, but I don't think this is the right way to go about it. I remember that my very first logged-in edit to Wikipedia 13 years ago was made to an AfD discussion in response to canvassing on another site, but it was not supportive of the canvasser. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:50, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I wonder how typical my own experience is. I began editing in any serious way in 2013. I think it was late 2017 or early 2018 before I even knew AfD existed. Once I discovered it I spent many weeks just observing it before I commented. It was months before I put my first article up for deletion. How many people in this discussion have a completely different experience? I simply don’t assume good faith for ‘new’ editors who show up and are busily nominating articles for deletion in the first couple of weeks. There are all kinds of productive ways new editors can contribute to the project but sitting on your hands for a while before you start nominating articles for deletion seems entirely appropriate. Mccapra (talk) 20:02, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • @Mccapra: I had a similar experience. My first participation in a AfD was in AfD/Jamaal Anderson in 2007, only after having made hundreds of contributions over the years. AfDs—or any Wikipedia backroom bureaucracy—are almost naturally intimidating to the uninitiated, due to the various cryptic acronyms that are casually thrown around by the regulars. Unfamiliar with these, inexperienced or canvassed editors tend to copy-paste these acronyms in AfDs without actually understanding them, which makes them easy to spot for the trained admin eye. To his credit, creffett immediately spotted the unusual frequency of WP:BASIC citations in AfD/Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman. --bender235 (talk) 20:37, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • A couple of points worth mentioning here. Other language wikis It would be great to both explicitly encourage editors to look at other language wikipedias for sources and to encourage editors from other language wikis to participate in AfD's, especially in situations where there is the likelihood of sources being in non-English languages. Draft namespace Draft namespace is relatively new compared to AfD and moving good-faith contributions to draft to enable relatively slow-moving editing to occur should be encouraged, particularly for topical subjects. SPAs and paid editing my feeling is that a large numbers of the SPAs involved in articles that end up at AfD are undeclared paid editors. This is a larger issue than AfD, but it may be worth thinking about what can be done in this specific context. The best I can think of is a bot that creates a table on the talk page listing all the AfD participants and editors involved in the article and gives edit counts, how many are related to the issue at hand, and also scans for their names in sockpuppet investigations and other administrative actions. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:21, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I am very against default ECP. I'm open to reasonable suggestions for how to resolve the identified problems, but ECP is not one of those. To comment on Rhododendrite's questions: (1) I think this is reasonable. We have technical restrictions on who can move pages, so I think it's reasonable to have slightly more stringent requirements to nominate for deletion. (2) I'm not a fan, but am open to it. I would prefer the first option and see how that goes before default protection. Perhaps more practical is expanding the protection policy to allow protecting AFD discussions for sock/meatpuppetry or obvious canvassing. (3) I think just encouraging use of the talk page by everyone would work, but why have newbies go to talk just to be ignored? We're basically telling them to send their emails to /dev/null. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:31, 11 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • 2. Should deletion discussions be semi-protected by default? Can I suggest some alternatives?
    • Grouped edit notice for Template:Editnotices/Group/WIkipedia:Articles for Deletion
    • Some type of edit filter warning for non-(auto)confirmed users
    • Something similar to Wikipedia:GettingStarted, but it pops up when you enter WIkipedia:Articles for Deletion/***** for the first time; if for non-(auto)confirmed users, it pops up something similar to {{Not a ballot}}.
If the above aren't going to work in any circumstances, okay then go ahead and semi- protect it and hope those SPAa and canvassed users don't gets 10 edits after 4 days. This will prevent new users from participating, but 99.999% of the time, they think it's a ballot. Nobody uses the AfD talk pages, so let's direct them there. With that comes with more very complicated ideas, like moving policy based votes into the actual AfD by experienced AfDers, and considering if the talk page will be additionally used to addresss the consensus outcome. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 05:34, 12 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I'm certainly not against less restrictive interventions like these; I'm just pessimistic they would be helpful. I've seen {{notavote}} added to lots of AfDs, and [just based on anecdote of course] I've not really seen it help much. Call me cynical, but when I add it, I'm really just trying to signal to other experienced editors (and the closer) that there may be canvassing/SPAs going on here. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Thanks for starting this, Rhododendrites. Something that deletion discussions and move requests have in common is that, because they have a mandatory period and appear to readers, they can do damage when bad ones are launched. For move requests, we're trying to help by making the notice less prominent, but for deletions, it needs to be prominent. I wish there was a way we could signal to readers "this article is currently nominated for deletion, but it's very unlikely to pass", but we can't exactly just have it display the running !vote total (either technically or editorially). Still, there might be some changes we could make to Template:Article for deletion to help make it clearer what being up for deletion actually means. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 08:06, 12 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • We already have strict requirements for starting an AfD: WP:BEFORE. The problem is that they are not enforced. From what Uncle G has said, AfD was deliberately made rather difficult as a barrier to frivolous nominations. The tool Twinkle has subverted this to make a deletion nomination much easier than other, more productive actions such as searching for sources, working on the article or starting a discussion on its talk page.
Another problem is that the readership tends to be excluded from these discussions. An article may be read hundreds or thousands of times while it is at AfD but we rarely see these readers joining the discussion. I myself got started on Wikipedia when I saw a deletion notice on an article that I had been reading. Perhaps I have more aptitude for the Wikipedia interface than the average reader but if there had been greater barriers in place, then I too might not be here now and the hundreds of articles that I have started might not have been written. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit and so we should freely accept comments rather than engaging in voter suppression by restricting discussions to a dwindling number of incumbents and insiders.
Andrew🐉(talk) 11:01, 12 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • It strikes me as odd that we have concluded that the project is best served by creating some filters around article creation for new editors (I don’t know, maybe that’s still controversial?) but we continue to treat AfD as a free for all. It’s true that the best barrier we have is WP:BEFORE but I guess we’re having this discussion because it doesn’t seem as effective as it once was. Mccapra (talk) 11:15, 12 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Quite frankly, I think concerns over this matter are completely overblown. People have constantly been predicting doom and gloom over small problems, but it seems to me that AfD is more sturdy and capable of dealing with sockpuppeteering and canvassing than many give it credit for. New editors do not find AfD and immediately start making bad edits. It takes a lot of time for the average editor to even build up the confidence to start making proper edits, never mind contributing to AfD. There are really only two ways in which a new editor will even get exposed to AfD, either an article they created was nominated, or they were canvassed there. The former is an important learning experience, and being able to contribute gives a new editor valuable insight into how the process works. Stopping these editors from contributing will just further the image of Wikipedia as a bureaucratic nightmare where decisions are made by elitists in ivory towers. In the second case, such instances are isolated and so painfully obvious that dealing with it really does not require pre-emptive punitive measures. This sort of goes without saying, but default ECP is a terrible idea and I am opposed to it in the strongest possible terms. Devonian Wombat (talk) 05:02, 13 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Not doom and gloom. More about tons of wasted time, harassment, and possible external influence on our process (whether in good or bad faith). One of my original points was that we're typically able to deal with this, but there's so little benefit in forcing good faith participants to do so. Lots of wasted time, lots of attempts to influence the outcome. I don't disagree that the article creators/editors themselves should be allowed to participate, though. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Follow-up - apologies to start this thread and only come back a few days later. Several good points here. If these were actual proposals, it seems like were firmly in "no consensus" territory here, at this point. One thing that I think would make sense for me (or someone else) to do if formally proposing these measures would be to gather some data. My perception is that, putting aside the article creators/contributors themselves, new users almost never make valuable, policy-based contributions to AfD. That applies to nominations especially, and !votes slightly less. But I appreciate that not everyone may have the same perception. One open question for me is how to allow article creators/contributors to participate while preventing other new users? Maybe the only way is to direct them to the talk page, and to rework the notifications to be very clear about how to do so (i.e. to do everything we can to encourage participating there). Not sure. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:58, 13 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    As somebody said above (or elsewhere, I do not remember), there are only three categories of IP / new users taking part in AfD discussions: (i) they have been affected (created or significantly contributed to an article being discussed, typically by getting a template on their talk page); (ii) they have been externally canvassed to the discussion; (iii) they evade a block. If this correct (and research probably could be made about this - canvassing is difficult to detect but it must be visible by clusterization of new votes in the same discussion), then these issues probably should be separated -canvassing is not just about new users, and we certainly want creators of the articles participate in the AfD on the articles they created.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:15, 14 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I strongly support reforms to streamline the AfD process. In my time I have closed well over a thousand XfD discussions, and have observed two key patterns of sockpuppet manipulation. The first is where novices desperate to keep an article create numerous obvious sockpuppet accounts; the second is more sophisticated, typically connected to paid advertising, where the sockpuppet accounts are crafted with a veneer of legitimacy through the creation of nominal user space pages and through perhaps commenting on a handful of other AfDs or making a handful of other minor edits before engaging in the AfD of concern. Nevertheless, it should not be possible for an account created after the initiation of an XfD to participate in that XfD. I don't think that this is at all problematic for new users, who should expect that some time and experience is required to obtain certain rights. This should also not be a problem with respect to editors creating new pages. Quite frankly, editors should not be able to create new pages at all until they meet some minimal threshold of activity, so the ability to comment in XfDs should coincide with the ability to create new pages at all. BD2412 T 19:00, 14 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • These concerns raised seem pretty well addressed by WP:AFD, WP:AFDEQ, and WP:DISCUSSAFD in that legitimate AfD debate cannot be drowned out by obvious manipulation (sock-puppeting) or poor quality commentary, as AfDs are not a poll (consensus is not based on a tally of votes, but on reasonable, logical, policy-based arguments) and those processing the AfD are required to adhere to this (and if they do wrong, the article does not disappear, and can be recalled through the deletion review process WP:DRV). It also appears some of the generalisations about new users (who may or may not be new, given some new registered users have previously been editing Wikipedia for years as non-registered users) has some undertones not in keeping with the spirit that Jimmy Wales had for Wikipedia (that the value of an editor was not in how long their registered account had been in use, or even how many edits they had made, but in the quality of their contributions to Wikipedia, which may come from registered editors both new and old). Some form of artificial class system based on seniority/tenure/clique would seem contrary to that - even the auto-confirmed class (which has been deliberately set at the low threshold of just a few days) isn’t really such a class system. Like Devonian Wombat stated, New editors do not find AfD and immediately start making bad edits... There are really only two ways in which a new editor will even get exposed to AfD, either an article they created was nominated, or they were canvassed there. Therefore, there does not appear to be an issue with the current framework for AfDs that requires re-invention in my view. Kangaresearch 08:16, 18 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • What Dennis Brown said: AfD is one part of WP that really works well, participation at AfD is down, newcomers who are there are apt to be defending pieces they personally have a stake in, there is no better way to learn the notability standards than to actually participate in deletion debatese, there would be nothing gained and much risked by tightening standards for participation there. Carrite (talk) 14:08, 18 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Perhaps all that's needed is a guideline that says that it's acceptable for an experienced editor to move the banner to the talk page in cases where it doesn't seem likely the AFD will pass. Or perhaps BLP shouldn't have the banner at all? It's not hard to see how it can be percieved as an officialy endorsed slight against the BLP subject. ApLundell (talk) 15:02, 18 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Remove AfD from Twinkle. You used to have to go and create the deletion page yourself and copy and paste the correct templates in. This was fine. Some things shouldn't be made easier. It takes two separate people turning two separate keys to launch a nuclear misslile. This could be streamlined, but would that be an improvement? I haven't seen any evidence that either way that adding AfD to Twinkle was a net improvement. It's not helping, so end it. Herostratus (talk) 02:22, 22 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • 1. Should there be stricter requirements to start a deletion discussion? What kinds of requirements? At a glance, imposing more requirements would just make it so some deletion-worthy articles remain on the wiki. A lot of stuff can't go through PROD, and isn't eligible for the strict CSD criteria, but is clearly deletion-worthy and should go to AfD. I don't see stricter requirements helping the process.
2. Should deletion discussions be semi-protected by default? Canvassing is a problem, but I've seen less active Wikipedia users contribute helpfully to AfDs before, particularly AfDs that would benefit from more niche knowledge, particularly AfDs for some non-Western topics. I don't know if making discussions semi-protected would help in that sense. An experienced closer can deal with arguments from SPAs and effects due to canvassing, but the process does not benefit from suppressed views of the kinds of users I mentioned.
AfD has problems, but I'm not sure these are solutions. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:16, 23 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Stricter requirements: Yes. Notification of the article creator and any other editors who have edited the article significantly should be required, not recommended, in the instructions. Some people don't use their watchlists, some have watchlists so long that an AfD can slip by, some are inactive but have preferences set to notify them of edits to their user talk page, and it is a basic courtesy that also increases the chance of participation by people who know the topic. I'm not sure how it would be enforced, but WP:BEFORE should be required. Deletion nominations by editors who don't know the topic and haven't looked to discover it is, in fact, a topic, or who simply don't like the topic, are an increasing problem as the number of articles grows and participation at AfD dwindles. They waste other editors' time and risk our losing useful articles. Restricting participation, for example by semi-protection: No. Apart from the principle of minimizing barriers to participation by unregistered editors, on which I am firm—they include not only potential new editors but also experienced editors whose wisdom and knowledge we should value, and it's their own business if they choose not to register an account—many people are first drawn into the discussion and collaboration aspect of Wikipedia editing through AfD. I saw an AfD on recent changes and was able to provide the rescuing source, and hadn't realized till then that such discussions, where we might lose a valid article because someone didn't have access to a book, were happening. And that is indeed the venue where most of us learn the ropes of notability. In any case, COI editors would be far more likely able to bypass restrictions than good faith newbies, including subject-matter experts. So attempting to restrict AfD participation would do more harm than good. Yngvadottir (talk) 00:58, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Just noting yet another brand new account nominating yet another biography of a woman for deletion. Created an account, made exactly enough edits to be autoconfirmed, then came back a few days later and nominated here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sarafina Nance. Like the examples that immediately preceded my opening this section, and like the many other new accounts nominating/proposing articles by Jesswade88 and others, it's awfully hard to see this as something other than harassment by deletion process and demonstration of how easy our very low bar for creating these nominations is to game. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:31, 7 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Mm. As a frequent AfD flyer over the last fifteen years, there are many changes I would want to make. I would love to stipulate that articles cannot be taken to AfD until at least three days after creation. I would love to stipulate that closing admins cannot make headcount-over-policy closes, nor consider the opinions of any Keep voter stating that there are sources out there, who does not then put those sources into the article. I would love to stipulate that editors who haven't been auto-confirmed for at least a month cannot participate in the process, either filing or voting. Hell, I would love to stipulate that any editor who votes Keep based on a perceived flaw in one element of the nomination, while ignoring the valid elements that remain, should be taken out and shot.

    But other than requiring extended confirmation in order to file -- a harmless enough stipulation -- I don't see that there's a lot we can (a) do about it, (b) agree upon, or (c) enforce, given our obvious competing interests. This is an area where our respective hobby horses clash skulls as hard and often as anywhere on Wikipedia. Ravenswing 02:28, 21 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

  • Comment on process it seems like there are lots of different things happening in this discussion around highlighting issues and solutions but its all getting mixed together so its difficult to know if there are common themes and agreements on ways forward. Is there a way to collate comments into different themes or something to 'see what's going on'? I'm not sure if there is an established process for this? John Cummings (talk) 15:36, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Notability in AFD

Not sure if this discussion is still active, but thought it worth adding my perspective/experience.

First, just as I've seen stacked IWANTIT discussions, I've also seen IDONTWANTIT steamroll discussions as well. (I'm avoiding the "inclusionisn/deletionism" labels, as, in my experience, most people do not tend to completely reside in black/white boxes.)

I remember a long while back, when blp first started being an issue, and around that time, "notability" really came to the fore.

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."—Jimmy Wales

That quote pretty much was undermined by the apparent necessity of blp.

I even remember a discussion about forking blp's to a separate Wikimedia wiki (WikiBio, or some such).

So to bring it back around to this discussion, What if we just restrict "notability" rationales for deletion, to biography articles (article named for a real person or a group of persons, living or not)?

I welcome discussion on it, but I think WP:V / WP:NOR / WP:RS should easily take care of the rest, thus addressing concerns about the "subjectivity" of the application of "notability" in a particular discussion.

pinging user:Rhododendrites, user:Masem, and user:Astrophobe - the first 3 to comment in this discussion.

I hope this helps as a way forward. - jc37 03:15, 24 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

You cannot restrict notability rationales at AfD without first changing the notability and deletion policies. The former says stand-alone articles must be notable and the latter says they can be deleted if they are not. If an article cannot be nominated for notability reasons at AFD, that leaves no practical way of deleting it. Contrary to your claim, there are numerous articles that go through AfD that have verifiable information, but not enough to meet WP:N. What you propose goes way beyond a change to the AfD process. SpinningSpark 15:41, 24 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
Do you want any old completely non-notable company, product and theory to have an article? We have policies of deleting due to notability for obvious reasons. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:50, 24 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
To be clear, I'm not resolutely against a fundamental rethink of our inclusion criteria (in fact I think that would be highly beneficial), but I'm not in favour of the (implied) change in this proposal. SpinningSpark 16:40, 24 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
I think there are problems with our notability standards that I won’t expand on here. However I don’t see a reason why we would restrict notability to BLPs only. I think our fundamental problem is that we aspire to collect and share the sum of all human knowledge but we’re not completely clear about what ‘knowledge’ is. Is it the same thing as ‘stuff’ or some kind of subset? Personally I’m very relaxed about small town mayors and other people we currently AfD out of existence so I don’t have a problem with significantly widening our definition of notability. But we also need to recognise that there is a tidal wave of rubbish pushing its way onto Wikipedia - promotional material about every pizza restaurant in Akron, Ohio, every ‘AI startup’, and all sorts of bizarre POV stuff about history and nationality. If we let all of that in we’ll rapidly become Opinionopedia. If we’re the world’s intellectual junkyard that’s a significant change of mission and why we should continue to require notability for BLPs but not for other articles doesn’t seem consistent to me. Mccapra (talk) 18:37, 24 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

On the subject of notability

I agree whole-heartedly that we have a participation problem at AFD, in the fact that it is too easy to nominate, and too easy to Ivote "Delete" based on that catch-all "notability". Do we still allow stub articles on Wikipedia? Because one thing I'm seeing with select really prolific nominators, is the tendency to go through a whole category (geographic, institutional, etc) where stubs have been set up (not necessarily with a "stub" template at the bottom), and AFD them as "Not notable". That is followed by ivoters who are new enough to have not much clue on Wikipedia stub policy, who ivote a delete. And you end up with hundreds of deletions of what would have previously been acceptable as stubs. Because "notability" is not established. We have a really serious problem with this. — Maile (talk) 22:48, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

  • This is often the fault of the closers, who could pick one of the alternatives to deletion such as redirect. the remedy is to use Deletion Review more frequently, asking for not an overturn, but a relist, on thegrounds of insufficient discussion. Relists usually attract more attention. (Generalizing a little, there is almost nothing in Wp which would not be helped by more participation) DGG ( talk ) 16:11, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I agree; I'm pretty new here and already two of my articles are nominated for deletion on the count of notability (Lucy's Heart and Olivia Harkin if you're interested).

    Lucy's Heart is a short film that was shown on at least one film festival (that I could verify) and has an extensive IMDb listing, but because of its very nature (independently produced short film) it didn't get coverage in media outlets that count towards notability. So: not notable according to WP:NFILM. So basically, a whole subgenre of film isn't notable. The deletion voters' argument is that there are numerous other outlets on the internet where you can list those films. By that logic, we could basically call it quits on wikipedia, because that goes for pretty much any headword on here.

    Olivia Harkin is an actress, to my personal frustration not notable by current WP standards (I imagine that must hurt if you'd read that about yourself), so: AfD. Again, no citable sources discuss her as a person, only her work. Rave reviews on her drumming in Fame: The Musical, but not about who she is or where she was born. But what if someone would like an overview of the work she's done? You can only find where she's in if you know where she's in in advance this way.

    The deletion voters' argument on the latter again is to put this information in other places (IMDb), and again I reply: then why bother with wikipedia project in the first place? IMDb is a commercial entity; if Jeff Bezos decides to pull the plug, it's all gone. If he decides he wants to make more money, he could make you have to pay to access it.

    Jimmy's vision is to have a place for our collective knowledge, so that anyone could look up anything. Sure, examples given in other posts here make sense, as articles can be very easily used as political battlegrounds, but aren't we enforcing too strict a rule when it comes to notability? After all, what's notable or not differs per person. In my research I often scan databases of old newspapers. The kind of articles or subjects you stumble upon there is remarkable. Sometimes very useful, as it might put me on the right track of finding something, but those same articles wouldn't be notable on WP. Those would be lost for future generations if it was up to some people here.Sjokhazard (talk) 07:41, 8 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Political parties, notability and AfDs

I am a regular AfD contributor with specific focus on political parties. This debate about notability strikes at the heart of my "interest". I hold my hand up to admit that my bias is towards the deletionist tendency, because I believe Wikipedia is not a Gazetteer of political parties and that we should do far more than just host stub articles for political parties that merely exist, rather than achieve electoral success or achieve historical significance. As of late there has been a clear consensus by the wider community that political party articles should be deleted where GNG and ORG guidelines are not met: see Residents' Association of London, Patriotic Socialist Party, Free England Party, Gwlad Gwlad, Miss Great Britain Party, Common Sense Party (UK), Cymru Annibynnol, Christian Democratic Party (United Kingdom) and so on. Not one of these parties achieved anything beyond existing, some had no electoral candidature at all, surely the most basic thing a party should achieve.

What I would like AfD to do is based on my understanding of our basic principles of notability and importance. Nobody has lost any vital information through the deletion of these articles, yet there is no safeguard against similarly scant articles being created.

I am interested by the idea spoken about elsewhere in this discussion about asking AfD nominators to show they've exhausted other avenues - including re-directs and mergers. I would certainly approve of this functionality, as it might make the 'clear up' of stub articles into more general article spaces easier and more convenient. However I would also like to recommend that the community draws up a policy on political party notability, so we can say for certain what exactly makes a political party worthy of a full article in mainspace. doktorb wordsdeeds 07:24, 5 September 2020 (UTC) 07:23, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Contrary to your claim, Wikipedia is a gazetteer, but that does not mean that every political party needs an individual article. SpinningSpark 09:02, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Well, hush my mouth, I became so used to using that phrase in successful AfDs that I didn't stop to check that I was contradicting page one, line one, of Wikipedia's founding principles! All the same (and to sound a touch like a politician) I stand by the general point. Wikipedia contains elements of a gazetteer but is not specifically a gazetteer of political parties. The fact remains that there is fuzziness around GNG and ORG guidelines with regards to political parties and I will be interested to see if we can agree on what to do about the substantial number of articles about them. doktorb wordsdeeds 09:15, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

An XFD Idea to Toss Around - Discretionary Sanctions

This is an idea that has occurred to me from time to time, and then sometimes I have thought it was a good idea, and sometimes I have thought that it wasn't such a good idea. That is to impose Community General Sanctions (or ArbCom Discretionary Sanctions) on XFDs. General Sanctions are imposed on areas in which there is a high tendency to disruptive editing, such as areas that are real battlegrounds (e.g., Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan), or where there is a high incidence of fraud (cryptocurrency), or where there is a special need to deal with disruptive editing (e.g., BLPs, to protect, you guessed it, living persons). There are a few editors who make a nuisance of themselves either nominating things for deletion or defending things from deletion. Perhaps general sanctions would help deal with troublesome editors by allowing an uninvolved administrator to initiate sanctions that would otherwise require WP:ANI. Comments? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:46, 30 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

We need to decrease the use of DS, not increase it. Discretionary sanctions gives any one of the 500 active administrators the power to block in a way which requires exceptional effort and consensus to overturn. It was adopted at a time when Wikipedia had a real problem with the so-called "unblockable" editors, who, however much they misbehaved, would be unblocked by one of their friends; it was necessary to have a sticky block like this to deal with them. The approach worked, and there are many fewer such editors now. So exceptional circumstances where the ability to give a sticky block in contentious topics if necessary. I don't think AfD is in such a desperate condition at this time. Considering that there are some very different philosophies of what consititues an acceptable WP article in some fields, this gives any admin from one of the sides the ability to remove those who disagree, in a way that is exceptionally difficult to reverse. There are editors who abuse the afd system, and ordinary blocks are sufficient to deal with them. DGG ( talk ) 00:35, 16 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Requiring alternatives to deletion be exhausted before nominating an article for deletion

Hi all

I spent a while looking at what is going wrong with AfD because of several issues I had with articles being deleted (mainly of biographies of women). One way that I think would reduce the issues with articles being nominated for deletion is that currently the rules do not require contributors to explore the alternatives to deletion before nominating an article for deletion. If nominators had to show they had exhausted alternatives for deletion before nomination this would both provide additional motivations to improve the quality of articles (e.g more references to improve notability) and take most of the 'fun' out of malicious and low effort nominations.

John Cummings (talk) 15:23, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

On this basis how would you suggest we modify WP:BEFORE? There are times when nominators are too quick to put an article up for deletion, but if there are decent sources it does not take long for other editors to flush them out. If there are articles you think we should be keeping that are actually being deleted (as opposed to being wrongly nominated and then kept following discussion) this suggests that nobody at AfD is doing their job properly, not just the nominator, but this isn't a pattern I recognise. Mccapra (talk) 16:41, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
WP:BEFORE clearly says that alternatives to deletion should be considered before nominating an article at AfD. The problem is that we have some editors who don't consider themselves to be subject to the instructions that apply to other people (I suppose they regard them as the little people as opposed to the Übermenschen that they are themselves), and actually boast of not following them. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:07, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
That may be true, but if it is a behavioural pattern there are ways of addressing it that don’t require us to change the AfD guidelines. Ultimately if editors active at AfD do their job collectively, then nominators who haven’t done a proper WP:BEFORE won’t get very far. There’s a case that such nominations waste other editors’ time, but not that we lose decent articles because of bad nominations, AFAICS. Mccapra (talk) 18:33, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I disagree. Many AfD discussions are closed with a couple of "me too" votes, without anyone actually considering alternatives to deletion. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:12, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Phil Bridger, that is dishonest, offensive claptrap and you know it. Instead of calling people names, how about you try characterising your opponents' positions accurately and fairly, and debate them on their content instead of wild speculations as to their motives? Or is that too hard for you? Reyk YO! 18:39, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Please link to any AfD discussion where I have not done as you ask. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:09, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I want to say that this (BEFORE required before launching an AFD) has been a WP:PEREN but its not listed there, but I can tell at WT:AFD that the idea has been proposed and rejected many times. What I will say is that if you see any AFD nominated, and keeping in mind the history of the editor nominating it, that you do not believe in good faith that they have executed a proper BEFORE search appropriate for the topic, mention and call this out. (This would be the case for where we're talking topic pre-Internet, where sources more local to the event may be needed in print and thus not easily found just be a google search). --Masem (t) 18:23, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Masem:, @Phil Bridger: exactly, WP:BEFORE says they should be considered but doesn't require it, either of the nominator or anyone taking part in the process or to use them to reject deletion nominations if its clear alternatives are possible. Making it a requirement would put the onus on nominators to explore alternatives and save the time for people taking part in AfDs discussing articles that shouldn't have been nominated in the first place, it would cause no change for people already following the recommendation. I've thought about this quite a lot and cannot think of a downside to this change, am I missing something?
I'm unclear how exactly this could be implemented in practice, my suggestion would be the nominator would be required to show they have exhausted alternatives in nomination process, not just say 'have you considered the alternatives to nomination = yes' but to actually show the work e.g showing there aren't enough reliable sources in common places for that topic e.g Search results, Google Books, Scholar and News etc. John Cummings (talk) 18:40, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I think you may be missing WP:CREEP which, ironically, is seemingly the favoured link for one of the WP:ARS stalwarts across a broad swathe of discussions such as this. - Sitush (talk) 18:40, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Sitush: thanks, this change would wouldn't include much new instruction, my guess would be one change and one new line. It would mainly be a change in the wording on WP:BEFORE from 'Consider whether the article could be improved rather than deleted' to something like 'Exhaust opportunities to improve rather than delete the article' (that wording needs some work) and then an extra line in the AfD nomination form asking the nominator to show they've actually done this. John Cummings (talk) 18:50, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
First, I would recommend reading the WT:AFD archives because again, making BEFORE mandatory, while not a perennial suggestion, has been asked many many times. Also, not all AFD requests are based on lack of notability, which BEFORE is specifically about. There's also reasons that may be based on notability that BEFORE can't address, like if the sources available - maybe established in a previous AFD as exhaustive - still don't give significant coverage per the nominator, and they seek deletion. BEFORE is not a one-size-fits-all approach prior to all AFD, basically. --Masem (t) 18:58, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
But this discussion is not about notability. It is about looking for alternatives to deletion, which are also addressed by WP:BEFORE. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:56, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
The problem with BEFORE is that making it a strict requirement turns the discussion away from the article, it content, and its sources and towards a lawyerly checklist and procedural shutdowns. It's best to regard BEFORE as advice on how to write a convincing nomination. That it keeps getting used as the delivery mechanism for personal attacks on deletion nominators doesn't help either. Reyk YO! 18:44, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
A much better way of reducing the load at AfD would be to create a new permission called article_creator or something like that, give it to every editor who has shown that they can create articles that don't have notability or other serious issues, and require that every new article created by editors without the permission goes through AFC. Black Kite (talk) 18:46, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Since 2018, we've already had article creation restricted to autoconfirmed accounts, after the Foundation reversed its unilateral prohibition on implementing the plan which had been first approved in 2011. (See WP:ACTRIAL for the full history of this long contentious issue). Based on my experience with the issue, I believe that 1) The restriction to autoconfirmed accounts is sufficient in keeping the worst abuses to a minimum and 2) It took the Foundation 7 years to come around to what was a WIDELY supported community initiative. I think your proposal is dead in the water, as I see no way the Foundation would support any additional restrictions on article creation, given how hard the fought against the community on this one. --Jayron32 19:00, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Oh, I didn't think it would. But I can't think of any other way to at least restrict the large amounts of spam, cruft, paid editor creations and other crap which isn't coming through AFC. Black Kite (talk) 19:58, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

I think that the balance needs to be tipped a bit in the opposite way. A significant part of creating a article in Wikipedia is to find and include references. That's why they are called editors and not title generators.North8000 (talk) 20:09, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Going back to the original proposal to require alternatives to be exhausted, I’ve been giving it some more thought. First of all my question is do we think that articles on decent, notable topics are getting deleted at AfD constantly? Regularly? Occasionally? Very occasionally? Because I think to make a major revision of WP:BEFORE we’d need to agree that there is a problem of sufficient magnitude to warrant it. For my own part, I’m not persuaded. I look at AfD every day though I don’t scrutinise each individual discussion closely, and my impression is that overall, it’s doing fine. Yes there are nominations what are not grounded in policy, but other editors contributing to the discussion deal with that. I’d support some thresholds for allowing editors to make an AfD nomination at all in order to reduce the number of pointless nominations but I know that doesn’t enjoy support here.
The main alternatives to deletion, other than just leaving the article alone, are going to be redirect or merge. If we’re going to say that we won’t allow an AfD nomination until both redirect and merge have been tried and failed, I don’t support that. Often articles nominated at AfD don’t have suitable merge or redirect targets anyway. Also I think this will impose much too high a burden on the nominator. Merge proposals can take months, and any time we’d save at AfD we’d lose in hugely expanded merger discussions.
To me the main benefit of an AfD over alternatives is that it gives us to opportunity to reach consensus. If I find a BLP that I think doesn’t belong in Wikipedia I don’t want to engage in a potentially endless ping pong of doing and redoing redirects while the article creator undoes them before I’m allowed to seek consensus on what should be done. We should be able to seek consensus quickly, not only as a last resort. If the conclusion of an AfD is to redirect then there is a good chance that can be made to stick, and that is less of a waste of everyone's time than expecting an individual editor to doggedly pursue alternatives for days, weeks or months before being allowed to nominate at AfD. Incidentally I would expect one unintended outcome of taking this approach would be to increase incivility and edit-warring. AfD is a formal, rule driven process where we can air differing views on notability dispassionately and without making it personal. Only letting editors into that forum after they’ve done a dozen rounds of slugging it out one to one with the article creator isn’t really going to help us build the encyclopedia any better. Mccapra (talk) 04:58, 7 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I think @Mccapra: has made some good points. The only difference of opinion I might have is if, after trying to redirect, it gets reverted, then take it to AfD. Same with a merge. However, a merge can consume more time and if that gets reverted, for me it is not a happy occasion. I haven't been able to read this entire page. I've only gotten through about 1/3 of the page. I intend to read the whole thing over time.
This is a really good discussion. I think AfD nominations only by extended confirmed users is a good idea. Also, an article created by social media canvassing should have a COI tag placed on it, and may brought to the COI noticeboard for discussion.
As an aside, it is upsetting to see claims of social injustice by Twitter personalities just because an article is nominated for deletion. That is not the issue, period. We have notability criteria which is usually a neutral arbiter for keeping or deleting an article. One more thing - perhaps AfDs of canvassing Twitter personalities' articles should be automatically posted at WP:AN to garner admin eyes in case the canvassing is too overwhelming (something like that). ---Steve Quinn (talk) 06:45, 23 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per CREEP I really don't see the necessity in this. Yes, there are users who abuse AfD. They can be topic banned for repeated disruptions. Articles are usually brought to AfD not for quality control but because someone believes the topic lacks notability. Thus, aside from a BEFORE check, there is nothing that can be done to "improve" the article if it simply lacks notability, so urging editors to exhaust themselves in improving an article that can't be improved or shouldn't be improved is unhelpful. -Indy beetle (talk) 16:46, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. I am absolutely against wasting more editors' time by forcing them to jump through more hoops in order to earn the right to nominate an AfD. The unintended consequence of this, I fear, will be that Wikipedia will simply fill up with more promotional BLPs of non-notable people. There is an absolute plague of these, dozens every day. Every one is created and defended by a fan or a UPE. There is generally nothing to redirect or merge them to. It is hard enough to get editors to deal with these as it is and much of the backlog at AfC and NPP is accounted for by them. I hesitate to nominate them for deletion myself because often this leads to a week of back and forth in the AfD discussion and on my talk page, draws in sockpuppets and kicks off a major effort by the creator and their real/sock friends to talk the nomination out with bluster and irrelevance. If I'm going to be told that instead of having to deal with these muppets for seven days I'm going to have to argue a merge and a redirect with them too, I just won't bother and will leave them to someone else to deal with. Perhaps I'm not typical and there's no shortage of other editors to take on this task. If there are, could they sign up for NPP please as we desperately need them - we need more articles coming to AfD, not fewer. There is a constant daily battle to get crap off Wikipedia, and we're not keeping up with that even as it is. I am in favour of trying to reduce the number of frivolous or badly-argued nominations by requiring a higher threshold of editor experience to be able to nominate an AfD, though I recognise that's not what is being proposed here and that it has been discussed and rejected before. Mccapra (talk) 11:29, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • oppose as instruction creep. Either flesh them out early on and properly in draft, or refund them to draft. And there is no problem to recreate them with proper sources if you think an article has merit. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:49, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Past images in articles

Latest comment: 3 years ago73 comments24 people in discussion

I've pinned this section because it needs closing before archiving. SpinningSpark 14:47, 21 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

I would like to discuss what the policy is, or should be, on images that were once used in articles but no longer are. To my mind, such images should be retained, either here or on Commons, because they form part of the history of the page. Deleting old images breaks old versions of the page. It also removes some of the attribution, which becomes a licensing and legal problem for any reusers of old versions of the page relying on hyperlinks for attribution. In my view, we should also retain images used as part of talk page discussions. Sometimes, the discussion makes no sense without the image.

Some background; I deprodded around one thousand images back in May that had been mass proposed for deletion on the grounds that they were not used in any article (although the vast majority of them had once been so used) and the "poor quality" made them unsuitable for Commons. These deprods went largely unchallenged, but there is still a steady stream of simmilar cases turning up in CAT:PROD and the deprod sometimes gets challenged at Files for discussion, the latest case being Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2020 June 21#File:Null-balance voltmeter.png. SpinningSpark 10:37, 21 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

I dunno, how important is it for images to display in old versions of the page? In practice it may also be difficult to know about a file's past usage. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:42, 21 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
The importance of old images is exactly the same as importance of old text for precisely the same reasons (which are in my opening statement). If you think this is unimportant you need a better rationale than "dunno". As for "difficult to know", on the contrary, in the vast majority of cases it is very easy to find out. One has only to check the edit history of the uploader; the image is often used in an article in the very next edit. Not checking this is just pure laziness on the part of the nominator. SpinningSpark 13:08, 21 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Not sure I understand why old images need to be deleted. If the image was good enough for an article at some point, then it should be moved across to Commons. If the quality is seen as poor, then tag it somehow as "needing a better version". If the image is re-used and somebody is motivated by the poor quality, then a new version will happen. — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 12:39, 21 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
I'm assuming this is about fair-use images? One of the fair use conditions is for images to be used on pages. We can't be an image gallery for copyrighted materials. If items are free, they should be moved across to commons anyway, so I'm not sure what the policy change here is being proposed? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:18, 21 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
No, this is not about fair use. The images being discussed here were all nominated for quality reasons. They were all uploaded with a free license, usually self-created. SpinningSpark 13:38, 21 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Depends on WHY the old image was removed. If it was simply because editors thought that a new image was better, then we have no problem with maintaining the old image somewhere (such as commons). However, if the old image was removed for cause (such as violating copyright), then we MUST purge it completely. Case by case situation. Blueboar (talk) 13:30, 21 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Agreed, of course, we should not keep copyrighted images. You say "we" have no problem keeping but the NFF FFD page is absolutely causing such a problem. Its reasons for nominating include orphaned, obsolete, low quality, and unencyclopedic, all without any reference to policy or guidelines. All of these can include files that appear in article histories. And on the last criterion, I have created files in the past to clarify a talk page discussion. These are clearly unusable in an article but are open to deletion (some have been) under these criteria. SpinningSpark 13:47, 21 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I believe that how we handle files is outside the rest of all parts of the other contributions to the history of a article page, and thus retention of older, unused files is not necessary, though we retain the file: space history aspects related to that file that relate to who had uploaded the file and the source/other details. All of our disclaimers to users, and our upload notifications all suggests that the hosting of images (and other AV file types) is wholly separate contributions from mainspace contributions, and while you are still agreeing to make your contribution to the project, it is not being tracked as part of the contribution of the article it will belong to. When looking at contributions to an article, it is not the image that we look at as the contribution, but the text/code that puts the image in place as the contribution, since that image can change independently after that text is added to the article (by a file update). A reuser of an article that is taking images would be required (if they are following the letter) to point to the histories of both the article and all used images to track contributions. So no, I don't think we're required to keep old images. That said, obviously we delete unused NFC, but I see no reason why we need to delete unused free images unless its clear they are completely unusable or otherwise clearly violate other policies (eg: graphic nudity beyond what's necessary for articles on human anatomy). Poor but not unusable is not a good reason to delete a free image --Masem (t) 13:57, 21 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • The argument is not that old images are needed for attribution, it is that old images allow inspection of previous versions of an article, including meaningful diffs. We don't purge revisions with unused text on the basis of "orphan" or "unnecessary". That's because it can be useful to view old revisions, for example, if wondering why a certain section is the way it is—has an edit from long ago accidentally damaged or omitted an important point? Johnuniq (talk) 04:00, 22 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • But we do have to reconcile that we are required to delete unused non-free images from a copyright and WMF standpoint. When the unusued image is free (for the stuff that can't go to Commons) I fully agree, lets keep it to help with previous revisions of articles, but my point is that if the old image was a proper non-free but since replaced, the file: page should be present that a user checking an old revision can see from the source on the file: page to get an idea of what it is (and even if that's not the case, the description should be sufficient to get an idea, this is why we have this information). We need to delete the "pixels" from the File: page and while we need to "delete" the non-free file page to remove that from being included in scope in article scope, we shouldn't purge the deleted text revisions on the file: for this reason. --Masem (t) 15:53, 22 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Images not currently in use that are of lower quality than others that do not have any other (offsetting) added educational value are not in scope for commons. A recent dicussion on commons concluded that "image was formerly in use in a wikipedia article" was not a reasonable basis for keeping an image tagged for deletion. One of the reasons mentioned there is an important one unrelated to images directly...we routinely make widescale changes that make previous revisions of a page no longer "as they were at the time" when viewed in article-history. A simple example is a change to a template that makes some formerly-used field no longer visible (same effect as if an image in use at the time were deleted). Images solely for discussion of wikipedia issues and brainstorming (no encyclopediac or educational content) obviously aren't in scope for commmons...they should be tagged {{Keep local}} with some rationale so others will be less likely to mis-handle them. DMacks (talk) 14:13, 21 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    I also note that WP:CSD F1 and F8 have existed for a looooong time. Some deletion...speedy, not even discussed, of some free images that were once in use, making the old revisions of articles that once had them no-longer-render-as-they-did, is currently a policy. DMacks (talk) 02:36, 22 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    @DMacks: F1 and F8 apply to duplicated images, the former on Wikipedia, the latter on Commons, and what "unused" means is here is open to interpretation. Virtually none of the thousand files I deprodded was a duplicate — that's why they weren't speedied. Of files that are duplicated on Commons, the vast majority are moved there with the same name as Wikipedia. There is thus only a speedy problem with a tiny minority of a tiny minority of files, and in any case, they are probably an oversight of the original policy draft. The original proposal for F8 is here. This was clearly controversial as the proposal had failed multiple times previously. Part of the agreed compromise says "If the image is available on Commons under a different name than locally, it must not be used on any local page whatsoever." In other words, don't delete the local copy if our article uses a different name from Commons. I also note that the original version of F8 – then I9 says "bit-for-bit identical", in line with the original version of F1. It got changed in this edit as a result of this discussion with poor participation. I don't think any of this shows consensus for these deletions. In fact it shows that we have got where we are largely through undiscussed scope creep. SpinningSpark 14:00, 22 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    It's a policy that supports deletion of currently-unused files in a way that breaks layout of old revisions of an article. DMacks (talk) 15:15, 22 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    We strongly discourage (if even recommend against) image placement layout on articles ("pixel perfect placement") over placing images at relevant text in the document with minimal hints guiding sizing and location. That deletion of images causes these "layouts" to be broken that are not supported by policy is not something we should be worried about. --Masem (t) 15:26, 22 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    That is entirely not the issue in hand. SpinningSpark 15:40, 22 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
    Perhaps "layout" was an imprecise term on my part. Better would be "display" or "content" (whether the image is present at all) let alone the pixel positioning of objects. DMacks (talk) 15:59, 22 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Deleting old images because anyone can prod is ridiculous. It makes looking at old article revisions very hard; it does not save space; it does not save anything; it's a waste of time. Sure, put some energy into deleting old dick pics and similar because discouraging people from using Wikipedia for non-encyclopedic self gratification is useful. However, File:Null-balance voltmeter.png is part of the history of an encyclopedic article. If that should be deleted, why not permanently delete old revisions of text that are no longer used? Johnuniq (talk) 00:10, 22 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

Response from FFD nominator: User:Spinningspark says they deprodded a thousand images in May. I believe that I have nominated two of those and File:Null-balance voltmeter.png from June at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. I believe that it might be useful for other editors to see more than this one cherry-picked example of what they think is valuable to keep. I notice that while at least two people from this discussion have !voted on the image mentioned above, nobody appears to have found reason to !vote on File:Roodog2k-roo1.jpg that is also being discussed currently.
Wikipedia:Files for discussion/heading was created more than 10 years ago (and I believe that something similar was in use before that, but ten+ years is a lot around here) and listed "Obsolete, Orphan, Unencyclopedic, and Low quality" as four of the five common reasons for nomination, which are still the first four in the header today. At some point in the last few years, images were added to the Proposed Deletion process (at a time when I was less active). There are a few of us who look through the orphaned images from fifteen years ago and try to process them; If they have reasonable source and license and a chance at reuse, we move them to commons; Occasionally, we find one that we can reuse in an article immediately; A lot of them are things that may or may not have ever been used in an article and we make a decision on whether or not we think it will be reused.
We could leave it behind and hope that when someday someone decides to create Null-balnce voltmeter, they will look back at a 15-year old version of voltmeter and see the perfect image instead of creating a new one themselves, but most of us who do the work have been around here long enough to doubt that will happen. The other problems with leaving the image behind are (a) that it will sit in the swamp of orphaned images that we slog through and we will have to look at it each time we pass through and make the same decision repeatedly and (b) that the various ways to look for orphaned images will not actually display all 75000, but only the oldest ones. If any of you hearty souls who feel that these old images really belong over at Commons would like to help out with moving old orphaned images to Commons, I would love to have the help.
As long as WP:FFD continues to describe many of these ancient images as common reasons for nomination, I will continue to nominate them through whatever process avails itself.  ★  Bigr Tex 23:07, 23 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

You will notice that (a) I have not voted for keeping the roodog image, even though was aware of the nomination, and (b) it has not actually ever been used in an article so is irrelevant to this discussion. It is easy enough to template images that have been reviewed once so that they need not be looked at again. That's a really poor jsutification for mass deleting images. SpinningSpark 23:33, 23 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

The policy justification for these deletions is WP:NOTWEBHOST. Images with no potential to be used in article or project space in the present or the future (for reasons including "obsolete, unencyclopedic, low quality") don't need to be here, even if they have been used in articles in the past. Being orphaned is not enough. The text of Template:Orphan image puts it well, I think. (Full disclosure, I placed a handful of those PROD tags, and I've made delete votes based on this reasoning at FFD.) Wikiacc () 01:44, 24 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

This. I've previously PROD'd such files as well. The choice to use PROD over FFD was deliberate; if someone *really* wants to maintain old page histories, then I'm not going to stop them, the file may be restored without fuss. But IME, this is neither a common want nor need. -FASTILY 00:04, 25 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

Proposal on images in page histories

So let's make a definite proposal to focus this and bring it to a conclusion. I'm deliberately not proposing a definite wording to guidelines so we don't get bogged down in the minutia and address the principle, but the pages that might need editing if this passes include, but are not limited to;

I'll make a separate proposal for article and talk pages as I suspect there will be a difference in attitude to the two. Note that the example I raised at the beginning is heading for keep at FFD, so there is prima facie evidence that this has consensus for at least some images. SpinningSpark 11:45, 26 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

  • I disagree with your proposal, but have spent the last two weeks declining to participate because there was no discussion (which implied to me that there is not great interest or support for your proposal) and because there are no instructions for how to participate.  ★  Bigr Tex 15:16, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Should files be retained so that the appearance of a historical page can be preserved? 17:56, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposal on retention of images in article histories

Proposal: That images that have appeared in past versions of an article should generally be retained. SpinningSpark 11:45, 26 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

  • Support. Images that were used in articles should be retained unless there is a specific reason to delete them. I'd make an exception for images that were exclusively used for vandalism, but that's the sort of thing that can be worked out when we get to the detail stage. Thryduulf (talk) 13:04, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support as nom. SpinningSpark 13:08, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose because there's usually an alternative or other reason. If an image has novel educational value, it should be moved to commons. That's what happened with the image that started this discussion (Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2020 June 21#File:Null-balance voltmeter.png), so there is no precedent created for "keep because was formerly used" (more than half of the !votes for some sort of keep did not mention that as a basis). Commons is a collection of realistically-educationally-useful images even if they are not in current use, and they get lots of categories there to help future editors find existing images for new article content (maybe another language has been looking for an image of something we already have?). That's true equally if the image is a novel aspect of an article-topic that isn't covered in enough detail to merit an image, or got removed because of NOTGALLERY concerns. However, if an image is simply poorer than an alternative (someone makes an illustration in higher resolution, fixes a typo or other factual mistake, etc) at an alternate filename, then the original file does not have value except for article-historical reasons and I would delete. If it were moved to commons, it would likely be deleted there. Having images of lower-than-alternatives quality or with mistakes makes it harder to find the good stuff to write as best we can. If an image is wrong, then it's too easy for someone not to know that and reuse it (especially external users), in which case we fail our WP:V role.

    We routinely make changes that cause "old revisions" of large swaths of articles to no longer look the way they did at the time, including being completely broken, content missing, etc, especially in the world of templates, and the site-wide CSS and rendering engine itself. Now that we have section-transclusion and pulling content from wikidata (and have always had embedding of images from commons), there even are tons of "regular edits" (not just widespread things) that make looking at an old revision of page not the same at a later date (or even looking at the current version of a page). Therefore, I don't accept "to see how it was" as a generally valid reason to keep. DMacks (talk) 15:37, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
    There is WP:NODEADLINE. If old images should be moved to Commons, then why not actually do so before deleting them locally, instead of leaving a redlink behind? If you can't be bothered to do that, then you shouldn't be cleaning up unused local files. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:22, 12 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
The question is "should we keep", which I assume because we're here on enwiki means keep on enwiki. That's why I opposed the question as written based on giving alternatives such as moving to commons. DMacks (talk) 03:53, 14 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
Importing another thought I mentioned in the previous discussion but forgot to include here in the formal RFC... "delete enwiki images, leading to redlinks in previous revisions" is a fundamental effect of CSD#F8 when commons has a different name for it and of CSD#F1 in general. That's a consensus policy for speedy without discussion, so the proposed policy-change here (keep if formerly used in good faith) seems like it would require abolishing those criteria. That policy talkpage should be alerted. DMacks (talk) 04:03, 14 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
@DMacks: I interpret the proposed policy in a completely different way from you. To me, the fact that images can be speedied locally under F8 after transfer to Commons is so untouchable that I can't imagine a new policy changing that, and any proposal which does not explicitly overturn F8 should be read in a way that does not imply that. So for me, the only effect of opposing this policy would be to allow deleting images without transferring to Commons, which seems counterproductive to me. Regarding Commons potentially having a different name for it, we can always create redirects on Commons. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:31, 28 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose - I find the supposed need to be able to see exactly what a page used to look like doesn't match the history of how page history is primarily used (for crediting edits toward the existing version, and for tracking editing problems), nor with how we treat anything else here. There are a number of things we do that make looking at an historic (say, 2010) edit different from seeing it exactly as it appeared at the time (for example, we don't subst every template, so the templates all have their modern appearance when we look at the historic edit.) And the upshot of such a policy would be to incentivize putting in pointless photos, because any picture you once put into an article stays on forever, relevant or not. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:26, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support if they are free images, with some clear encyclopedic value (no random pics of people's genitalia for example). If they can be moved to commons, they should be. If not, kept on WP. But considerations should be made for when improvements have been made and otherwise keeping an equivalent image (eg say a line-and-text drawing at 300x300px is reuploaded at 2400x2400 for better resolution, the 300x300 version is clearly not needed). Oppose for any non-free unused image as per the WMF resolution, we simply can't do that. Comment that I don't see the need to distinguish between image use on mainspace or talk space, because this is near impossible to track when starting from the image page, and would make for an admin nightmare. --Masem (t) 16:42, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support strongly per m:keep history. MediaWiki was designed as an improvement over UseModWiki, and one of the main features was keeping all history, not just some. It's important that we keep our history in a useable state because editors may want to go back to find images to re-use, figure out how a page's appearance has changed over time, or revert to a previous stub. There's little value in deleting free images, and a potential for harm. Having been used (and stable) in an article should be a sufficient reason to keep a file. — Wug·a·po·des​ 20:51, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Keeping history is important. Deletion does not save space and only wastes time and energy in pointless discussions. It is useful to delete images uploaded for non-encyclopedic reasons in order to discourage self-gratification. That does not apply to images that were useful in articles and which might have some detail that would throw light on article wording. Johnuniq (talk) 23:47, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support (for free images) as long as the image has remained in the article for a significant time (say, at least a month). Storage is cheap, and having an old revision look as close to it used to is very helpful to editors who want to compare an article throughout its history. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:19, 11 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per DMacks globally, and oppose for non-free images per Masem. --Izno (talk) 17:53, 12 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Images that were part of an article and still meet the tests in WP:MTC should be moved to Commons so that the article history is preserved. (Otherwise, why not just purge old article versions as well??). — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 20:35, 12 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose - As others have said, there are already a variety of changes that make pages in the history distinct from how they were at the time. Images form a relatively small proportion of this perceptual gap; the logic that deleting images "breaks" old versions of the pages is incorrect - they are already "broken". I also don't see any convincing reason why images should be retained, apart from "it's part of the history", which in my opinion isn't a convincing reason on its own. Many sites like the Internet Archive already retain a lot of these images anyway. - Axisixa T C 01:03, 14 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose We should move to commons any image has proper source and licensing information and a possibility of future encyclopedic use, here or elsewhere. If it doesn't, we've listed that we are not a File Storage area for more than 10 years and it should be deleted. We have existing processes in place to determine into which of those categories an image belongs and some of which have been in place for even longer. I also find arguments about other history-breaking changes compelling.  ★  Bigr Tex 03:38, 14 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support for free images. Keeping a non-free image is problematic as per minimal use. Whether it is on commons or en.Wikipedia makes not difference. But commons really doesnot care to keep this old stuff for en.Wikipedia, so if deleted off commons it should be restored back here. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:46, 14 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per DMacks' excellent analysis above. To underline a few additional points: we are not a hosting service. When files get deleted, it happens for a reason. The purpose of revision histories is not to serve as facsimiles of how pages used to appear. We delete unused/deprecated templates as well. Orphaned pages would be nothing more than a maintenance (and watch) burden. But above all: images deemed realistically useful not just in the past but for the future should, can, and are habitually transferred to Commons under current policy. If a need truly arises to see a deleted image in a revision history, you can always ask an admin and a copy will be provided to you. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:38, 15 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose - Images are deleted for a reason. "We used it before" is not a sufficient rationale for countering our deletion reasons. -Indy beetle (talk) 02:45, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • @Indy beetle: this proposal will not override other deletion criteria such as licensing. It is for when "unused" is the only deletion rationale. That is why the proposal says "generally" and not "always". In other words, images previously used should not be considered "unused" but can still be deleted for other reasons. SpinningSpark 07:15, 16 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support File space is not a problem and the images don't actually get deleted anyway. What's most important is maintaining our audit trail as the years pass so that we can fully understand earlier versions of articles which may get munged or distorted. Copyright is not a long-term issue because all copyrights expire as the years pass. We should be planning for Wikipedia to last for centuries and it will then be interesting to study the evolution of its content. Consider the state of content from classical history which is now fragmentary as a result of attrition, decay and malicious destruction. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:42, 25 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per above. We are not a file hosting service. If necessary, useful images can always be copied to Commons. Without an obvious way to check if an image was previously used in an article, this is not enforceable. -FASTILY 22:47, 28 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose Solution without a problem that's likely to cause new problems. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:04, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support to keep history. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:09, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Proposal on retention of images in talk page histories

Proposal: That images that formed part of a meaningful talk page discussion (in any namespace) should generally be retained. SpinningSpark 11:45, 26 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

  • Support. If an image has been used on a talk page in any meaningful way then it should be retained unless there is a specific reason to delete it. Thryduulf (talk) 13:05, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support as nom. SpinningSpark 13:09, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. If the loss of images makes a discussion in a talk page archive unintelligible, it may be necessary to hold the discussion all over again, which is likely to be a waste of everyone's time. If an editor who provided a useful image in the past is no longer a participant, the results of the redundant discussion may be inferior to the result of original discussion. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:14, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Semi-support as long as two tagging processes are used:
    • An image whose discussion reveals a mistake gets clearly tagged as having a mistake (comparable to c:Template:Disputed diagram) to alert anyone who stumbles across the image (for example, looking at an older version of an article!).
    • An image that is incorrect, clearly lower quality than alternatives, or created solely for discussion and workshopping gets tagged {{Do not move to Commons}}. License-compliant images are generally moved to commons for benefit of all, but if there's no benefit for anyone else to have or it's not in their scope, they will just delete it and we'll have lost what we wanted to have.
And this is all predicated on discussion/image itself being in good faith and seeing the image likewise being useful (per one of Nat Gertler's concerns in previous section). We routinely remove talkpage content for NOTSOAPBOX or spam purposes, so a discussion of such an image might be valid but the image itself in bad faith (bad-faith content even of images should be removed). DMacks (talk) 15:46, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose only because from the file: space standpoint, we cannot easily tell when images have been used elsewhere after they have been removed. It doesn't make sense to create distinctly different policies here. --Masem (t) 16:43, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per above. If a discussion centers around an image, deleting it removes the context of the discussion and makes it more difficult to understand if not completely useless. — Wug·a·po·des​ 20:53, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support It is sometime necessary to dive into history to understand why an article is the way it is, and what might be done to improve the article. Deletion does not save space and only wastes time and energy in pointless discussions. Johnuniq (talk) 23:49, 10 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Images used on talk pages are often central to the conversation, which cannot be easily understood otherwise. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:21, 11 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per DMacks globally above, and oppose per Masem specifically for talk pages. --Izno (talk) 17:54, 12 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Images that are part of a meaningful talk page discussion and meet the tests in WP:MTC should be moved to Commons so that the talk page history is preserved. (Otherwise, why not just purge all talk archives??). — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 20:35, 12 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose An image that is in use on a talk page or it's archive is not what is being discussed here. We are talking about an image that was used on a talk page but at some point in time was removed from that talk page. In either case, we have deletion processes that allow for review and movement to Commons for images with valid source and licensing information. The idea that an editor is going to find a deleted discussion in the history of a talk page to save time from repeating that discussion without understanding how to obtain access to the deleted image or mention it to someone who might feels somewhat far-fetched to me.
If an image has a possibility of future encyclopedic use, here or elsewhere, we should move it to commons. If it doesn't, we've listed that we are not a File Storage area for more than 10 years.  ★  Bigr Tex 03:04, 14 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
If an image is moved to Commons, it already can be speedied under F8. So opposing this is pointless unless you explicitly want to delete such images without taking the few minutes to move them to Commons, in which case: why? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:25, 28 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
King of Hearts Is that question to me? If so, can you rephrase it?
I'll try to address it, but I may be answering something different than you were asking: I have no desire to spend time to move an image to Commons if it is going to result in a deletion discussion on Commons because the image has no expected future encyclopedic use; That is a waste of my time, the nominator's time at Commons, the admin's time at Commons, and more of my time when I have to try to remember and justify why I moved it. I prefer using the Proposed Deletion process for those images, but am also happy to use the Files for Deletion process if necessary. Again, I am talking here about orphaned talk page images that someone uploaded in the (generally distant) past for use on some talk page and is no longer in use on that talk page and for which the discussion in which it was used has not been permanently archived.  ★  Bigr Tex 03:25, 29 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
I see, I think we are interpreting the proposal differently. I assumed that it was referring to images used in talk page archives, because almost all talk page discussions get archived (unlike mainspace edits, which I suggested a separate set of rules for). If an image is part of a legitimate talk page discussion and somehow didn't get archived, then that is an oversight and the discussion should get archived. If an image was used on a talk page and quickly reverted, then I agree that it can be deleted. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:37, 29 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
I am basing my understanding off of the beginning of the discussion that led to the proposal (above), "I would like to discuss what the policy is, or should be, on images that were once used in articles but no longer are."
I suspect that this part of the proposal was prompted in part by Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2020 June 12#File:Essjay 666.gif where one former editor posted a screenshot of a memorable edit count on another former editor's talk page (edit link). It remained there for four days and then was archived by the recipient. It lived in the archive for almost a year before I lose track of it; the recipient asked for all of their userspace content to be deleted when they left the project.  ★  Bigr Tex 04:14, 1 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per my comment in the above section and Masem's comment in this. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:38, 15 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per above and per my comments above. -FASTILY 22:47, 28 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose If they're currently used in an archive, that still counts as in use. If they got blanked off the talk page, they're probably not that important anyway. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:05, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Gratuitous deletion in such cases is disruptive and is mostly a waste of time as the files aren't actually deleted. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:12, 25 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support for future historians, and when no useful purpose served by deletion. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:12, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

RFC: Multiple roles for active arbitrators

Latest comment: 3 years ago98 comments50 people in discussion
The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is consensus in this discussion that current members of the Arbitration Committee may not simultaneously serve on either the Trust and Safety Case Review Committee or the ombuds commission. A minority of editors opposed with respect to the T&S Case Review Committee; some argued that because membership in that committee is non-public, enforcement of this proposal will be impractical, and others argued that there is no need for the restriction because many of the cases reviewed by the T&S committee will not necessarily involve the English Wikipedia (enwiki arbitrators can then recuse on cases where they might have a conflict of interest). On the other hand, most editors in this discussion felt that separation of the roles is necessary to avoid conflicts of interest; many editors found undesirable the idea that an editor who heard a case once on the Arbitration Committee could be able to rehear the same case as a member of the T&S Case Review Committee. Finally, a few days ago, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion which enacts an internal procedure that is consistent with the result of this RfC. Respectfully, Mz7 (talk) 22:29, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Background:

  • In July 2020, the Wikimedia Foundation began seeking volunteers for the Trust and Safety Case Review Committee. The role of this committee is to serve as a sort of safety valve, allowing a small group of community members to help review decisions regarding office actions taken by the Foundation, adding an appeals procedure to what was previously not subject to appeal of any kind. Membership in this group will be secret as well as all internal discussions and processes. This committee will report only to the Foundation Trust and Safety department.
  • There is another body known as the Ombudsman commission which investigates issues regarding advanced permissions such as checkuser, oversight, and other issues involving the Access to nonpublic personal data policy. This group's membership is not secret, but its proceedings are. Other than occasional public reports with anonymized data, they report only to the WMF Board of Trustees.
  • The goal of this proceeding is to determine whether membership in either of these bodies constitutes a conflict of interest for current members of the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, as they may be asked to review cases in which they were involved in their role as arbitrators, or even to review the actions of fellow arbitrators, and there is no way for the community to know if they are doing so, and if there is a conflict, to determine whether active arbitrators should be barred as a matter of policy from simultaneously serving on either of these other bodies.

Case review committee

Should currently serving arbitrators be barred from concurrently serving on the Trust and Safety Case Review Committee?

It should be noted that a question regarding whether the foundation would respect such a restriction was posed, and a foundation representative indicated they would respect it. [4]

Support (Arbs and case review)

  • Support as proposer. I fully understand the need for this committee to be so secretive, but I feel there is an inherent conflict with the possibility that someone banned by arbcom may later be subject to banning by the office, and an active arb would likely already have a pre-formed opinion on the matter that could deny the appellant a fair hearing. We could ask that they recuse in such cases, but since we wouldn't even know who is on the committee there would be no way to know if they really did. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:23, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Or conversely, such a recusal would surely have the potential to out them as a member of the committee. — Bilorv (talk) 19:30, 7 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support as reasonable proposal per Beeblebrox and with the confirmation of meta:Special:Diff/20262061 in mind. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:44, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Makes sense to me. While I don't generally like creating unenforceable rules, I feel the linked confirmation from the foundation addresses that concern. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:18, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - alliances and prejudices are difficult to overcome, even for the best of the best. T&S must be completely detached, although I have no objection to (and encourage) ArbCom seeking input from T&S when they are faced with difficult decisions that may be influenced by alliances or preconceived notions about someone in the community. Atsme Talk 📧 20:29, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Weak support While I understand the need for the membership of this committee to be secret, I don't like the idea of creating rules that can't be enforced by the community. That being said, while I believe that any current arb would act with integrity and recuse themselves if they believe a conflict-of-interest exists, it's far better to remove the issue entirely with this proposal. OhKayeSierra (talk) 21:14, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support—ok, it's difficult to enforce, but I do think that WMF will hold to its promise. This will act as a failsafe against COI issues and help keep the committee fully independent. (t · c) buidhe 21:20, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support It is a conflict of interest to hear an appeal to a case you've already heard. Because the T&S committee membership is secret, it is impossible to know who would have such a conflict of interest and when. If the committee membership were not secret, I think we could afford to be more lax since we could handle conflicts of interest on a case-by-case basis, but if that is not possible, we should not create an opportunity for conflicts of interest to appear. Enforcable or not, we should make clear that this is the community expectation and trust that our arbitrators will respect our local policies even if the WMF does not. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:08, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support, just makes sense. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 01:13, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support our elected Arbs could be compromised if brought into secret WMF cooperation. Chris Troutman (talk) 13:58, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support, though more on the grounds of the weight of caseload and availability. Stifle (talk) 14:01, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per COI concerns. ——Serial 14:34, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support wholeheartedly. Arbs are already overloaded and stressed. Even if there were no COI issues I would support most anything to limit Arbitrator workload and stress. EllenCT (talk) 21:14, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. First for the obvious reason that it's unenforceable. More particularly, because this is intended to be a small group, and the Arbitration Committee regularly refers certain user issues to the WMF. This could potentially give someone who is a member of both groups two kicks at the can in relation to user management. As well, I really wonder about any arbitrator who feels they have an extra 5-10 hours a week to take on this task. Many arbitrators would be excellent candidates once they have completed their term on the Arbitration Committee. This overlap is undesirable and unnecessary. Risker (talk) 22:26, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Per Risker. It's an obvious conflict of interest, and with no transparency for the T&S committee (which is understandable, given the issues that they address) it would be easy for an arb to gain too much power over users. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 23:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Risker, especially due to the conflict of interest it presents. 0qd (talk) 23:59, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Unlike my !vote for OC - because this relates to users that often have made edits to English Wikipedia (as the largest wiki), it is harder to determine when recusal should happen. What do we do with editors who were WMF banned for edits across several wikis including enwiki? What if ArbCom received complaints or internally discussed the user's behavior but chose not to act? With this combination it would be harder to compartmentalize. --Rschen7754 02:41, 5 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Makes sense on the merits, not convinced by arguments over unenforceability. While my trust in the WMF is not particularly high, I do not think they would blatantly lie when they said they would respect a community prohibition. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:08, 5 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support due to possible COI, I disagree that it is unenforceable (The T&S committee would know who its members are anyway). I can see a strong case for cooperation and communication between the entities however Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:32, 5 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support for conflict of interest relating to cases referred to WMF by Arbcom, cases made by others against Arbcom members, and cases made under the Office Action catch-all clause that "community actions have not been effective." Presumably "community actions" includes Arbcom actions, forcing any sitting arb on this review committee to evaluate actions taken on the basis that they and their colleagues weren't up to the job. Better for both arbcom and future complainants to keep the processes separate. -- Euryalus (talk) 05:31, 5 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Without getting overly conspiratorial there's also the prospect of people seeking office actions because they feel that "community actions will not be effective," which is effectively their vote of no confidence in Arbcom's ability to handle the complaint. It would raise unnecessary conflict of interest concerns to have a sitting member of Arbcom reviewing an office action which only occurred because the complainant didn't want Arbcom to deal with it or even know it had been made. Can't say I support this kind of application of office actions - on any wiki with a functioning dispute system, office actions should be restricted to substantive cross-wiki and/or legal matters (eg. child protection). But we seem to be on a path toward more WMF involvement in community disputes, so there it is. As above, while new processes evolve its better for all concerned if the en-wiki Arbcom and the WMF's alternative structure can communicate with each other while avoiding direct overlaps in personnel. -- Euryalus (talk) 07:34, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per the obvious conflict of interest. I might add that I don't like the super-secret nature of this new committee. Just tell us who they are. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 03:05, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. The Arbitration Committee this year alone has given itself way too much power and way too much overreach in terms of how to handle administrators' conduct and what the consequences should be. The last thing we need is them tag-teaming with T&S in overreaching even further. Softlavender (talk) 07:37, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - The WMF says they'll respect this local rule, and the OC will be able to verify whether it was been complied with (unclear how this could be communicated back to ArbCom, but there will be independent verification). Makes sense to me, per what Risker says. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 15:33, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong Support per Atsme and Softlavender, although per the opposes by TonyBallioni ad Andrew Davidson would probably be unenforceable, and because history has shown that both the WMF and Arbcom members sometimes have personal vested interests. This still leaves the entire movement with the conundrum Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:40, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support: the reasons above seem to make this quite a common-sense approach. The only objection I could think of myself is that hypothetically, what if there weren't enough people qualified, experienced and responsible enough to be on the T&S Committee that were not current arbs? I concluded that this is very far from being true because the whole structure of Wikipedia eschews such monopolies on power. Someone on both committees would have a huge amount of power for a site that I see as fundamentally decentralised. The main strength of Wikipedia's community is that most people who do good stuff are not admins, most admin actions are heavily tied to community consensus and there are very few rules imposed from up on top. It is also a major weakness in many ways, but that's another story. — Bilorv (talk) 19:30, 7 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support COI concerns. Even if the community cannot enforce it, I would generally trust the WMF that they would respect this. wikitigresito (talk) 11:56, 8 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support – this is not at all unenforceable as T&S knows the makeup of both committees, and it makes sense to let them know the community's preference on this issue. I would encourage former arbitrators and functionaries to volunteer for this role, but no one should serve on both committees simultaneously due to the many conflicts of interest that would arise. (Incidentally, the need to recuse from certain ArbCom discussions would compromise the integrity of the membership of the CRC.) – bradv🍁 04:09, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Beeblebrox, Wugapodes and others. A separation here makes sense. - DoubleCross (‡) 15:28, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Beeblebrox. If this ombudsman committee becomes a thing, it should be comprised of people who are uninvolved in the behind-the-scenes elements of arbitration. Suffice it to say, that includes committee members. Kurtis (talk) 06:19, 31 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support' Consider theat this will be the highest level of review possible, it's especially important thattherebe no chance whatever of a COI. DGG ( talk ) 18:51, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Beeblebrox, Wugapodes. Given the potential COI issues these roles should certainly be separate. –Davey2010Talk 16:53, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Oppose (Arbs and case review)

  • Oppose as unenforceable since the membership will be private and the WMF would be free to ignore this if they felt they had a good reason. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:40, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
That's why (as noted above) I got them on record saying they would respect any such local rule well before proposing this. [5] Beeblebrox (talk) 16:45, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. I’m still generally skeptical of unenforceable rules from a community perspective. If we can’t verify that the rule is being followed; I don’t really like the idea of having it. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose This committee is appointed by the WMF and their legal staff in particular. The solicitation expects volunteers to have credentials and "Credentials in this case refers to community background - have you been an administrator? A member of an arbitration committee?" In other words, they seem to be specifically looking for people like admins and arbs. If other people don't think that's a good idea then that's just too bad as the people who are appointing this committee will be deciding. Anyway, anyone who is active on Wikpedia in any capacity might have a conflict of interest and so the issue is unavoidable. I suppose they will be looking for the sort of respectable and responsible people who will recuse when appropriate. People like arbs, who commonly recuse from cases already. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:11, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose largely per TonyBallioni: a rule that cannot be audited cannot be enforced, and an unenforceable rule is pointless. Overall I don't understand the value of a reviewing body so secretive that we can't even know who is a member; frankly I think the community should demand that at least one (maybe more) current arbitrators should be on this secret committee, for some measure of accountability, even if we can't know which specific arbitrators are selected. Otherwise this all reads as sinister to me, like the WMF is going to start disappearing editors they have dirt on, and point to review by this secret review board as justification for whatever actions they take. I don't like it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:31, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    that we can't even know who is a member I guess the idea is that some people may not be willing to sign up to possible personal abuse for controversial decisions. Second concern is a good point, but I'd note that regardless of whether this proposal passes or fails, it won't stop that. Even if arbs are allowed on the committee, if what you say is the foundation's goal, they'd just not pick any arbs to be on the committee. Since the membership is private, nobody would know if an arb is on it or not. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:50, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose utterly unenforceable because a member of the review committee can't even tell you if they have ever been on the committee in their lives --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 19:47, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I think the agreement os that the will be allowed to say if they choose after 6 months since they've left the review committee. DGG ( talk ) 18:49, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. This proposal is too much enwiki centered. In fact, the vast majority of cases this committee will be dealing with are not going to be much related to enwiki. In a small number of cases, in which a committee member has participated as a member of ArbCom, they can just recuse themselves. Ruslik_Zero 20:36, 5 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support idea, oppose proposal. I don't care if they're on both committees. However, we should have a policy that if they dealt with a case on one committee, they recuse from duties involving it in another. —Mdaniels5757 (talk) 20:15, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong Oppose - case review members who are ARBCOM members should have to recuse themselves from any case they've already handled (most likely recusing as ARBCOM members), but an absolute severance reduces a valuable pool unnecessarily. There's likely to be very few cases where this is an issue so a small overlap is causing a major consequence. Since the WMF has stated they'd respect such a restriction, I'd suggest making a policy that required recusal, with failure to do so grounds for removal from the case review committee. I believe Ombudsmen will know the identities, they could be tasked with overseeing if there are concerns about the WMF lying, for some reason. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:26, 7 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
there's a sufficient volunteer pool since it includes the people who have formerly been arbs. DGG ( talk ) 18:49, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong oppose. Anyone who is suitable to serve on the review committee will, by definition, be smart enough to know when they need to recuse - and the potential for such a conflict of interest to arise applies nearly equally to everybody not just current arbitrators. There is no need to arbitrarily reduce the pool of such members when doing so will not solve the problem (if indeed there is one) it attempts to. Thryduulf (talk) 08:29, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per Rislik0. Why should we prohibit an experienced member of the English Wikipedia community from helping one of the hundreds of other wikis under the Wikimedia Foundation umbrella? -- Dolotta (talk) 21:07, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per my comments in discussion. This is a proposal that fails to actually get to address the issue proposed, imo. Past arbs can be on the council, even though they might've served on the case (and it's just as likely for it to have been a past arb rather than a current), whilst current arbs are disqualified fully. There's no inherent COI I can see. The real way to address the problem is to make the question "should arbs involved in a case be prohibited from hearing it on the review committee?" (and asking the WMF to enforce, as with this proposal). Both would be equally enforceable (which is possibly "both equally unenforceable" depending on your wikipolitical views), but this one would actually address the problem posed. I don't see this proposal being helpful as such, and feel it's damaging whilst trying to address, in a roundabout fashion, an unlikely problem. If it's a problem, address it head-on. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:27, 26 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose provided they are allowed to and are expected to recuse for CoI. If we cant trust them to deal ethically with CoI problems we should not be electing them to Arbcom in the first place. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:15, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Discussion (Arbs and case review)

So this committee reviews T&S decisions? Have there been cases of T&S taking action against active arbitrators before? If not, realistically, the only conflict of interest would be if this committee is reviewing a case that was also heard before ArbCom? So, have there been cases of T&S overriding ArbCom decisions before? Since this temporary body only reviews T&S actions, the scope of COI seems limited to me. As a matter of principle, I don't see why ArbCom itself isn't able to review T&S decisions, but since it isn't I don't immediately see the issue with an arbitrator serving on this committee too. It doesn't seem like the majority of their cases would be reviews of arbitrator action / cases previously heard at ArbCom. Aside from that, this would cause competent candidates to have to choose between that committee and ArbCom. I think there's an overlap in skills that would make a person competent to serve on either body, so is this limitation not an issue? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:02, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

I don't know that there has been a case of T&S overriding arbcom, but there have certainly been cases where arbcom has banned someone and they later went on to get an office ban as well. That's where the concern comes in, when that person appeals to this top-secret committee it could be a case of an arb reviewing their own decision. I'd like to think they would have the integrity to recuse in sucha case, but with the committee being a total black box, the only way to even be kind of confident it won't happen is to prohibit dual membership. Note that former arbs are not included in this proposal, so there'd still be a large body of qualified people who could apply. It is a global group so it's not as if everyone has to be from en.wp. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:20, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Speaking of former arbs, there's automatically a problem there too? Of possible COI scenarios, there's a decent chance the arb on the original case was from a previous term. This proposal wouldn't fix that issue? Short of a proposal to disallow allocating cases to people who were arbs on the case (whether current or former) I think this COI issue would still exist ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:43, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I am puzzled by this concern. Arbitrators hear appeals all the time as part of their work. We see Arbs accept appeals from banned users who they voted to ban. The CRC is different in that it's reviewing foundation work and seemingly only for error (rather than WP:SO type appeals) but arbs review their own decisions on the regular. So I can appreciate the separation of power type argument but the idea that arbs would have an insurmountable bias seems at odds with what we normally expect of arbs (and how, on the whole, I see them act). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:55, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Going on from my oppose above, why not just require recusing in crossover cases. The WMF have said they'd respect a restriction, so why not make one that has people removed from the CRC if they fail to recuse when hearing it as an arb? If we think that simultaneously both an arb and T&S will lie on the matter, the Ombudsmen have sightline into both, and I think between those three things, and the seemingly small overlap, that should mitigate any issues without bringing in problems. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:35, 7 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Ombudsman commission

Should currently serving arbitrators be barred from concurrently serving on the ombudsman commission?

Support (Arbs and Ombuds)

  • Support as proposer. Really, even more so than than with the case review committee, because the Ombuds may, at any time and without our knowledge, be reviewing the actions of functionaries or even arbitrators here. As their proceedings are entirely secret, we have no way of knowing if and when conflicts between the two roles arise, so it seems best to simply eliminate even the possibility. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:23, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support they’d have to recuse anyway (or should) on an en.wiki matter since dual oversight roles is less than ideal. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:39, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support an individual shouldn't be serving on two bodies with overlapping oversight purposes with presumably 'equal' authority. Not to mention each arb has access to OS/CU, and (notwithstanding ARBCOND) they can't/shouldn't really be the final community port of review of their own OS/CU actions, which leaves the Ombuds. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:46, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • (edit conflict) Support. The requirement to recuse oneself notwithstanding, being on the body that is also tasked with overseeing ArbCom is imho not compatible with being an ArbCom member. We want OmbCom to be as effective as possible and that cannot be achieved if one or more of its members have to regularly recuse themselves from any cases regarding ArbCom. It also does not seem fair to the other members of OmbCom who will have to do more work in those cases because the recused members can't participate. Last but not least, requiring people to choose one or the other ensures more individual editors are involved and decreases the risk that people might think that an OmbCom member is trying to influence their proceedings in favor of their ArbCom colleagues. Regards SoWhy 16:53, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support as a reasonable proposal per Beeblebrox. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:46, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - clearly a conflict as presented by SoWhy. Atsme Talk 📧 20:33, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per TonyBallioni and SoWhy. OhKayeSierra (talk) 21:17, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support don't appoint people to watch over themselves, end of. (t · c) buidhe 21:22, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Just makes sense. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 01:13, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Beeblebrox and ProcrastinatingReader. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:29, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per SoWhy. -- Euryalus (talk)
  • Support - sensible separation of duties. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:21, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Seems to me an ombudsman role should hold ARBCOM responsible. We have other editors from whom to pick, folks. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:09, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per SoWhy & Ivanvector. 0qd (talk) 23:59, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - summed up well by SoWhy and nom Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:28, 5 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support obvious conflict of interest. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 03:06, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - AGK resigned from ArbCom when he was appointed to the OC, which I think was the right move. I did the same with my steward rights. I think it makes sense to avoid holding multiple oversight functions, particularly when one is at a higher level of appeal. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 15:31, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per SoWhy. —Mdaniels5757 (talk) 20:17, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support unlike the case review proposal, this makes much more sense. The overlap is greater (indeed, it's actually targeted, whereas the CR people aren't overseeing ARBCOM) Nosebagbear (talk) 13:30, 7 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support – the OC recusal policy is entirely voluntary, so we have no assurance that a member on both committees wouldn't weigh in twice on the same issue or act as judge for one of their peers with whom they have an unrelated dispute. It's just better if the two groups are mutually exclusive. – bradv🍁 04:14, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Beeblebrox and SoWhy. As stated above, a separation here makes sense. - DoubleCross (‡) 15:28, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Beeblebrox and ProcrastinatingReader - Again should remain separate. –Davey2010Talk 16:56, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Oppose (Arbs and Ombuds)

  • Meh meta:Ombuds commission says As a general guideline, it is best that ombuds avoid conflicts of interest as much as possible, particularly by avoiding routine use of CheckUser or oversight access and not processing complaints on the projects on which they are very active editors. To me, that would mean that Ombuds-arbs would only have to recuse from cases involving (ab)use of CU/OS tools. I don't see any problem with Arb-buds telling people to stop edit warring over tree shaping or whatever. Arbitrators often have wide experience with CU/OS tools and how they're supposed to be used, so I think their input on Ombudscom is useful, and we shouldn't discourage it. It's also my understanding that the ombuds don't actually do that much. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 16:38, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose All of us would need to recuse from all EN Wikipedia-related business anyways, so this is based on a flawed sense of how the OC works --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 19:44, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per Guerillero - enwiki is not the only wiki so there is likely enough work to do with handling complaints from other wikis. I don't think this is a wise decision because of the workload of the combined committees - but not something for us to legislate from enwiki. We also risk going into WP:CREEP territory here - should we make a policy saying that current arbitrators cannot be stewards? enwiki crats? etc. --Rschen7754 02:42, 5 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
The key difference in my mind is that we can see what stewards and crats are doing. We have no way of knowing what ombuds are doing. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:41, 5 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I also think a sitting arb wouldn’t pass a steward election even if they wanted to run. Both from the anti-en.wiki crowd and by en.wiki people who don’t like the idea of someone being both. That’d get you to 79.9% or less pretty fast. I know that’s not the same as a policy against it, but it’d be very hard to overcome. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:45, 5 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I'm not so sure about this for stewards - a global lock of an account with a fairly bland summary might not be noticed, and CU/OS actions are generally not visible. They also have a private mailing list (where there are discussions on borderline cases) and escalation route to WMF. --Rschen7754 06:18, 5 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Discussion (Arbs and Ombuds)

General discussion of multiple roles for arbitrators

Just a general note that there was some internal discussion among the committee members regarding this, and the consensus was that it would be best if the community decided this issue. If these proposals pass, they could be implemented by adding a few lines at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures describing the new restrictions. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:23, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Umm...@Beeblebrox: Wouldn't this constitute an amendment to ArbCom policy which would require majority endorsement by the committee, majority support with at least 100 editors participating, and exactly one partridge in a pear tree? GMGtalk 16:37, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I think if we do it through procedures instead it doesn't have to go through all that. That's my read anyway. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:41, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Selection and recusal are ARBPOL. Procedures are only changed by committee majority anyway, not community consensus. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 16:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I think you only need a committee majority or community majority with 100+ supports. And 12 partridges in 1 pear tree. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 16:42, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, doing this as an amendedment to ARBPOL via the 100 support method is probably best. Beeblebrox, do you have an objection if I change the votes to numbers instead of billets? TonyBallioni (talk) 16:45, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Could we not just yet? I really didn't set it up that way, maybe we take the temperature here, and if it seems like it has a reasonable chance of passing through that rather arduous process, then we go that route, probably with a dedicated subpage. Not much here gets 100 votes, up or down. We'd probably need a sitenotice in addition to using CENT. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:15, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
The committee is free to make up whatever procedures it wants, including limiting committee members from assuming other roles, but then of course it can rescind them whenever it wants, too. isaacl (talk) 19:40, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
That's more or less why I went this route and not the full policy amendment route, which is far more involved. There was some talk of just doing this ourselves but in the end more arbs were in favor of soliciting community input first. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:25, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Comes down to whether or not the community is willing to leave the documentation of the restriction to the discretion of the committee. In both cases, as long as the Wikimedia Foundation knows and respects community consensus, then the Arbitration policy is moot, anyway. We should ensure that the Wikimedia Foundation is aware of any agreed-upon restrictions and that it is documented in their procedures in an appropriate location. isaacl (talk) 20:21, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

I don't understand why this is a question for EN wiki. Shouldn't the prohibition (or not) apply to all Wikipedias? Otherwise we get a situation where EN arbcom members cannot be on the committe but members of a different language arbcon can be? Please clarify. RudolfRed (talk) 23:04, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

forgot to ping proposer @Beeblebrox: RudolfRed (talk) 23:05, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
The short answer is that each project makes its own rules. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:22, 4 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
(And most projects don't have ArbComs. GMGtalk 14:19, 4 August 2020 (UTC))Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

What is the current status of moving Wikipedia to CC BY-SA 4.0?

Latest comment: 3 years ago10 comments6 people in discussion

Hi all

I'm trying to find where Wikipedia (not sure if this would be different for different language version) is with moving from CC BY-SA 3.0 to 4.0. I remember a few years ago the WMF board agreed or decided (I'm struggling to remember the details and cannot find anything written) that Wikipedia should move to the new license, but that there were legal issues to work out. Does anyone know:

  • What stage the process is at, if there is a page describing it or a Phabricator ticket or something
  • Where the board agreement might be
  • Any other relevant info

I'm really interested in this because there a re large number of organisations publishing text under the 4.0 license which currently cannot be used on Wikipedia.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 15:12, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

John Cummings, There was a community consultation on a proposed TOU ammedment at meta:Terms of use/Creative Commons 4.0. The board was updated a few days after the discussion closed, but I could find no further developments. JSutherland (WMF), you were involved in that process; did anything happen after the 2016 discussion? --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:20, 6 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
@AntiCompositeNumber: thanks very much for the info. @JSutherland (WMF): is there a phabricator ticket or something that explains the progress? John Cummings (talk) 08:39, 7 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
John Cummings, for those of us not in the loop, what are the pertinent differences between 3.0 and 4.0? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:35, 7 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
https://creativecommons.org/version4/#:~:text=Version%203.0%20included%20a%20provision,verbatim%20reproductions%20of%20a%20work John Cummings (talk) 08:39, 7 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
The most important "change" is that CC BY-SA licenses only allow distribution under the current or newer license. So, 3.0 material can be imported to a 4.0 work, but 4.0 material can not be imported to a 3.0 work (which is the current unfortunate situation alluded to in the opening post). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 12:26, 7 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Finnusertop: am I correct to say then that if Wikipedia changed to a 4.0 license then both 4.0 and 3.0 licensed text from other sources could be imported into Wikipedia? John Cummings (talk) 10:47, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Just to add that I'm in a similar situation to JohnCummings, potential to work with an Education partner who've openly licensed some biographies, but on a 4.0, so can't currently import that text. Would be interested to hear of any developments! Lirazelf (talk) 08:37, 25 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

I've created a Phabrciator ticket to track the issue here https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261200. Thanks John Cummings (talk) 12:33, 25 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

  • As time goes by, more and more potentially useful documents will be blocked by being incompatible. It is a defect in the licenses. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:26, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

RfC: Reliability of headlines

Latest comment: 3 years ago117 comments61 people in discussion

Should Wikipedia:Reliable sources § Reliability in specific contexts include a new subsection stating that headlines are unreliable? — Newslinger talk 01:33, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Survey (Headlines)

  • Support - News headlines are almost never reliable for use as a source (the exception is the rare case when cited as a PRIMARY source to support a quotation of the headline itself). The guideline should explicitly say this. Blueboar (talk) 01:44, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support: News headlines often exaggerate the content in the story, or present the opposite of the truth... just to correct the reader in the body of the article. They can be completely unreliable. I saw an example of that yesterday; found some content using the sensational headline when the concept wasn't even covered in the article. Normal Op (talk) 02:30, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - even the most reliable publications participated in clickbait headlining.--Moxy 🍁 02:38, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Support, and with Blueboar's stipulation. Headlines should not be considered a reliable source for content, and this should be policy. However, stating/mentioning the name of a source article is a fundamentally different case and should be treated as such. Armadillopteryxtalk 04:52, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - Headlines are meant to draw attention of the reader. Often, this is achieved by exaggerating the content to an extent, and making it inaccurate (and, therefore, unreliable). The only exception I can think of is what Blueboar mentioned above. Ahmadtalk 05:29, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support I've been hearing scientists and science journalists complain about bad headlines for 15 years. XOR'easter (talk) 06:07, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Even when an article is written by a subject expert, the headline is often written by a sub-editor who knows nothing about the subject. Add to that the need for brevity and the temptation to sensationalize or sacrifice precision for cuteness. Definitely not reliably except for themselves. Zerotalk 06:21, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. If the content of the headline is justified, it will be repeated in the article. The usual reason someone would cite a headline and not the article itself is that the article doesn't support the headline, ipso facto the headline isn't reliable. The exception would be when the statement being supported is about the headline itself (e.g., "Such-and-such newspaper ran a headline saying such-and-such"). i.e., Not to support WHAT the headline claimed, but to support THAT the headline claimed something. -MichaelBluejay (talk) 09:21, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Michaelbluejay. Some headlines are notable enough for (coverage in) articles (e.g. "Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious" and "It's The Sun Wot Won It") and so it is important that policy allows us to cite headlines in such circumstances (similar to how even the Daily Mail can be cited in an WP:ABOUTSELF fashion), but otherwise we should only be citing the content of the stories. Thryduulf (talk) 13:15, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support For reasons above. Also, noting, that headlines are often not even written by the author of the article or even a sub-author and often by a "headline writer" doesn't (have time to) really learn the article. They are written as clickbait, to grab attention, to sound cute/catchy (e.g. plays on words) and server other purposes than being a summary of the article. Even in a perfect world they would be an inherently faulty summary due to brevity. North8000 (talk) 15:23, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. I realize I'm in the minority here, maybe even a minority of one, but I never really understood these ideas about the unreliability of headlines. Headlines are vetted by the same editorial staff that vets articles. If we don't trust a source to write reasonably accurate headlines, then we probably shouldn't trust that source at all. Yes, headlines are summaries and therefore lack nuance, and we need to avoid using them out of context, but headlines are subject to editorial oversight at reputable sources just like articles are. I don't understand the contention that because headlines are written by "specialists", they are therefore unreliable, either. Again, they are subject to final editorial oversight just like the rest of any published article. Anyhow, I realize that "headlines are unreliable" has become accepted and unquestioned wisdom at this point, but I feel that the assumptions on which this idea is based are faulty. MastCell Talk 17:12, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Re lack nuance: The lack of nuance alone is problematic; that is compounded by loss of context. Those are not issues in body text. It’s not so much a matter of 'reliability of headlines' as it is 'reliance on headlines' given the lack of nuance and loss of context. Humanengr (talk) 18:22, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per MastCell, specifically "If we don't trust a source to write reasonably accurate headlines, then we probably shouldn't trust that source at all." Headlines are crafted well enough to attract copyright due to the skill involved, so they should be viewed as the product of editorial oversight too. Lack of nuance isn't an issue of reliability - it should not be possible for someone to be able to use a headline here to support a claim, when it is obvious from discussion that the intended use is ignoring nuance present in the article. But if even so called reputable outlets are reacting to clickbaot headlines, they should be punished by not being given the respect of Wikipedia. Jenga Fet (talk) 18:02, 10 August 2020 (UTC)— Jenga Fet (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. Reply
    • The headline of this vote (‘Oppose’) is contradicted by its body text: it should not be possible for someone to be able to use a headline here to support a claim, when it is obvious from discussion that the intended use is ignoring nuance present in the article. Humanengr (talk) 17:32, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • No, it is not "contradicted by its body text". The text is calling for the applicaton of good judgement, not the heavy-handed blankt ban called for by the proposal. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:56, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - Headlines are generally not vetted by the editorial staff. They are normally a different department than the writers and editors which may not even have input. The purpose of the headline is to get views and attention to the article. There are plenty of examples listed in the background of this RFC that show headlines may not even be an accurate summary of the article. Again that is not actually the purpose of a headline. Bottom line if the headline is not supported by the body then it is certainly not verifiable. If the information you wish to source is only covered in the headline of the article then it is probably not due, probably not subject to editorial oversight, and just there to draw a reader in. Why not set a higher bar for sources instead of a lower one? PackMecEng (talk) 18:24, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support: Again and again I have seen a story from the AP printed by different newspapers with wildly different headlines over the exact same story, and the headlines were often misleading clickbait. One time I saw an AP story that talked about wolves being taken off the endangered species list. One newspaper chose the headline "Good news! Wolves make amazing comeback!" Another wrote "Federal government OKs hunting of endangered wolves". --Guy Macon (talk) 18:42, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support with the caveat of covering notable headline text in its own right (i.e. Dewey Defeats Truman). I literally cannot think of a time when a headline text would be used in isolation and without regard for the actual text of the article in question. There can't possibly be a reason to use a headline and only a headline. If it's saying anything useful, it should be supported in the article text in question. If it literally exists in the headline alone, why are we using it to support writing in Wikipedia's voice??? --Jayron32 18:45, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose in current form, first of all because of MastCell's points, and second of all because this proposal goes too far. Yes, it is often the case at some sources that headlines are less reliable than the body, but at RSP we almost always use the language generally reliable or generally unreliable (emphasis added), whereas the proposals here so far just blanket state unreliable, which is stronger even than the language we use for e.g. the National Enquirer. At the highest-quality sources like The New Yorker, I'm fairly sure that headlines are put through the same rigorous fact-checking process as the rest of the publication, and I would challenge anyone who supports calling headlines unreliable without caveat to make a persuasive case to me that New Yorker headlines are unreliable. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:05, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • See New Yorker 10/30/2017: What Does Tulsi Gabbard Believe?. Humanengr (talk) 19:28, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • Humanengr, the question of that headline doesn't seem to have any discernible premise, other than that Gabbard has beliefs. Could you clarify your point? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:40, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
        • I was reminded of that headline by Neutrality's cmt below: headlines may be useful, not so much in that they provide any new information not found in the article itself, but in identifying the source's main thrust. On that, the headline indicates the focus of the article is Gabbard's beliefs whereas that is only a very minor fraction (<1%) of the article. The 'main thrust' of the article concerns one of her spiritual teachers. It gets into that after a bridge that insinuates given the framing provided by the headline — in a way that can't be fact-checked — that Gabbard is disingenuous about 'What she believes'. Humanengr (talk) 08:30, 18 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • No one so far has responded to my argument about Unreliable vs. Generally unreliable. If this does end up passing, I would at least want it to be be written better, so that we don't end up deprecating Atlantic headlines more strongly than National Enquirer body text. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:46, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I feel this is overly specific advice as writers can employ rhetorical devices mid article, too. Personally I suggest guidance that all source material should be interpreted within its context. isaacl (talk) 19:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose I think this is mixing click-bait headlines with regular ones, I don't think you can make a single general statement about all headlines. I also don't think this is such a big deal that requires a separate section in WP:RS, in most case the article text will provide the same information, probably just with less punch. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:10, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • It’s not the same information if it has less ‘punch’. Humanengr (talk) 18:54, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support in some form. Caution about using headlines as a source should be a guideline on Wikipedia. For those who are sceptical about the utility of a guideline like this, I spent many months arguing initially one but later several users who thought that "China virus" should be in the lead as an alternative name of Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, the cause of COVID 19 sourced entirely to article headlines Talk:Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2/Archive 6#Repeated addition of "China Virus". Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:16, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Especially as headlines can be different in the print and web versions, and they are changed far more often than the actual article without a note (go see the URL of an article and it often has the original headline). Headlines use different terms than rest of the article. It isn't even just about "clickbaiting", it's that for Wikipedia's purposes, you always need to go beyond the headline. --Pudeo (talk) 20:54, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support in some form. Headlines may be misleading or contain exaggerations. I'm not sure why someone would use a headline to justify a point - so I am not sure if this is just layers of bureaucracy. --Enos733 (talk) 22:23, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Mastcell is incorrect that headlines are vetted by the editorial staff, they are not. They are written for space and clarity if in print, and if on the web, to draw your eye, and that's what leads to clickbait. This gets even the best sources like the NYTimes in trouble (see the mess over Lawrence Lessig regarding Epstein). For our purposes, they are only a means to identify a specific article in a work for referencing, and that's it. --Masem (t) 04:02, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • To add to my !vote, the other issue is that even if a headline was factually true, there is almost no reason to use a headline by itself in isolation from the rest of the article as a source. A headline should be like our ledes; it should properly duplicate information found in the article body and not be introducing something novel. So while some headlines may be reliable from some sources, they are still "sources to avoid" on the general principle of things; there's just simply not enough context in that few characters. -Masem (t) 14:49, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support: if I had a dollar for every time I came across a clickbaity or inaccurate headline... Bowler the Carmine (talk) 05:09, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose, mostly per MastCell. Headlines should be given the same scrutiny as the underlying sources. The claim that headlines are not subject to editorial control, while it may be true in some case, lacks evidence that it is a widespread practice. I'm also not aware that we have a problem with editors writing article content based on headlines anyway. This might be worth considering if someone could point out a few dozen cases where articles were damaged by editors citing headlines. - MrX 🖋 12:33, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Where is a situation in which you would want to use a headline of an article that is not supported by the body? I can think of plenty of situations where the inverse is true but not the other way around. It is also something that seems to pop up over and over at RSN with the same outcome as noted below, so why not codify that into policy? Finally we need positive affirmation of the reliability of a source, the discussions at RSN and on WP:HEADLINE are enough to show, at minimum, large inconsistencies in the way sources handle headlines. So unless we can show a particular source has the required oversight to meet RS in their headline section we have a problem. PackMecEng (talk) 15:33, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • I don't have one that I'm currently working on but it's conceivable that such a case may arise at any time. I find that it's usually the same few editors arguing against headline reliability and always without presenting evidence of it being an issue. To me, this would be like arguing against other components of a source like photos, captions, dates, bylines, quotes, and so on. - MrX 🖋 19:30, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
        • Weird because examples are listed below. Who are these same few editors you allude to? It seems most here have given reasons, examples, and diffs either above or below in the discussion but the oppose side of the argument do not. Instead pointing to vague ideals and equally vague accusations. It would be helpful if you could show some examples of wanting to use a headline that is not supported by the body of the source being useful or due. I think you would have an extremely hard time of that because it is a situation that basically does not exist. PackMecEng (talk) 19:41, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
          • If by weird you mean WP:CREEPY, then I agree. Those are links to discussions, not examples of unreliability. They are not indicative of a common problem that needs to be solved with a content guideline. For example, in discussion #5, we shouldn't have to ask if a Splinter headline is reliable, when the real question is "Is Splinter reliable?" #3 mostly consists of bare assertions plus a topic ban violation. - MrX 🖋 20:15, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose, primarily per MastCell. If a source uses "clickbait" headlines, the problem is that the source is clickbait and should not be used, not that "headlines are unreliable." In reputable publications, the headline summaries the body of the article. Thus, headlines may be useful, not so much in that they provide any new information not found in the article itself, but in identifying the source's main thrust. That is useful when considering matters of weight. In any case, it is telling that there has been no evidence presented that we have a problem with editors writing article content based on headlines. I would like to see some real evidence of a substantive problem before we make rules. Neutralitytalk 15:34, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Listed below in the discussion section are several examples of problems with people citing headlines where the body of the sources does not support it. Also if the body supports the headline there is no problem, this discussion if for when they do not match. PackMecEng (talk) 15:39, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • It seems the issue comes up pretty rarely, and when it does the issue is mostly about due weight, not about "reliability of headlines." Note also that one of those discussions is about the Daily Mail, which is formally deprecated anyway) and several of those past discussions are not really tied to a specific issue in an article. Neutralitytalk 15:49, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP. A headline isn't a separate source; it's part of a source. And it is not explicitly identified as such. Interpretation of sources should be based on study of them as a whole, not by cherry-picking particular sentences. Trying to subdivide sources in this way is taking wikilawyering too far and will lead to vexatious arguments about chapter headings, footnotes, captions and other tyopgraphical entities. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:16, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support in some form. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're unreliable, but they should be treated differently than the body of the article, and should never be used to support something that isn't explicitly stated later on in the body. The notion that high quality sources don't use clickbait or misleading headlines is easily disproved. Just today I clicked on this headline from the BBC because it clearly implied that Joe Biden had picked a running mate. (He hasn't afaik.) Does this make the BBC a "clickbait" source that should be avoided (as User:Neutrality said above)? Probably not. It just means you need to look deeper than the headless if you want to use something as a source. ~Awilley (talk) 17:55, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Masem, Awilley and other support voters. Even top-quality news media like New York Times and BBC use clickbait headlines. If we didn't use sources that used clickbait headlines, we'd have no news media sources at all. Lev!vich 20:41, 11 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support When browsing the NY Times online, oftentimes the headlines that show up on the main page are different than the body of the article. Headlines are often meant to be sentimentalist generalizations and should be treated accordingly. Zoozaz1 (talk) 02:37, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Agree with Awilley that headlines should be treated differently than the body of the article and in particular they …should never be used to support something that isn't explicitly stated later on in the body and PackMecEng's related if the headline is not supported by the body then it is certainly not verifiable [emphasis added]; and North8000 re faultiness stemming from brevity. Even an ideal headline is (per Mastcell) a nuance-deficient summary. That and lack of context mean it should not be relied on for a fact claim. Also agree with Jayron32 re covering notable headline text in its own right [emphasis added]. Humanengr (talk) 06:10, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Jayron32 (If it literally exists in the headline alone, why are we using it to support writing in Wikipedia's voice???) and others. - DoubleCross (‡) 15:25, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Headlines are just clickbait. They are not subject to the usual editorial control. (By the way--this is true sometimes even in scientific journals. Nature for example has for many years run at least for the most important articles an headline which is different from the actual title of the article) . DGG ( talk ) 16:03, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I mean... Support the notion, but Oppose adding any specific guidance to that effect. We really don't need to legislate every tiny thing. GMGtalk 16:07, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. I don't think this requires legislation; it should be left to editorial discretion on a case-by-case basis. Some publications have a reputation for exaggerated headlines, and that's reflective of those publications' editorial approach. As others have said above, in such cases, the issue's therefore more one of whether the publication should be considered reliable at all. Or, it could just come down to a particular article–publication combination. If any relevant statement is added, it should certainly stipulate the type of headline because of the nature of the publication: A newspaper/site or news service reporting on current events or other hot, trending issues is out to attract readers right here, right now; a news headline in an arts/entertainment magazine, say, or related industry publication is out to grab the reader also, but the audience is usually theirs already. JG66 (talk) 06:40, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Question Can you link to examples of reliable sources saying something in a headline that is not in the article itself? Dream Focus 02:49, 14 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    For a fact-based news article, i.e., not an opinion piece? And excluding obvious errors? I can't think of any that I've seen recently. Sometimes headlines are unintentionally funny,[6] but it's pretty unusual to find a headline that says "Dewey Defeats Truman" above an article that says Truman defeated Dewey. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 18 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. If this requires any clarification, it requires no more than a footnote that headlines should not be cited for content not in the body of the story (unless the headline is itself a subject of discussion. Overkill. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006. Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong! (talk) 04:50, 14 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. This is simply overly broad and not needed. Our existing policies should be sufficient. -- Calidum 05:50, 15 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - Headlines are written by editors who are hilariously out of the editing loop, and further tweaked by algorithm. Bot-generated A/B tested headlines may get clicks, but are not journalism. Schierbecker (talk) 04:30, 16 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support: this is a point worth covering in our guidelines because it is natural for editors to make arguments based on headlines. Some people are arguing that if we cannot trust a headline then we cannot trust the source. Unfortunately this would leave us having no news media sources to work with, or worse, repeating deliberate spin and misleading descriptors rather than factual content. Headlines in the modern world consist solely of political propaganda, appeals to emotion, clickbait and other tricks to drive up engagement and revenue. In some cases the bodies of the articles are not much better, but we need something to work with to build our articles from. I do not trust headlines from The New York Times, the BBC, The Sydney Morning Herald etc. Additionally, headlines generally vary between print and online editions, are regularly changed after publication (in the online case) and can even vary between the same version of the article (A/B testing)! — Bilorv (talk) 10:13, 16 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support I've seen headlines in reputable sources that misstate or even directly contradict what the publication's body states, and I recently had a Wikipedia editor attempting to make a claim based solely on what a headline said rather than what was in the cited publication. Meters (talk) 22:08, 16 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support sorry Mastcell but too often I find headlines that make statements that are not supported in the article, particularly about political issues. There are sources discussing headlines that I think show that we shouldn't use them. The conservative Washington Examiner[7], the now defunct progressive Think Progress which explains why the article's writer doesn't write them, with the 3rd reason that "there’s a corrupt bargain. As a writer, you want to put together a responsible, defensible article. But you also want lots of people to read your article. An irresponsible, overblown headline can attract readers. But then you look irresponsible! The ideal scenario is for headline-writing to be someone else’s job. That way, they can err on the side of grabbing attention and if people complain you can always disavow it."[8] Doug Weller talk 14:31, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. We should selectively reject headlines just a we should selectively reject content found in the body of an article/source. Bus stop (talk) 14:50, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per everyone else. Even if we find better wording for this proposal, I cannot imagine any situation when the content of the headline would be deemed preferable to the content of the body of the source. Headlines are often consciously simplistic 'eye-catchers', that misrepresent the body text. Pincrete (talk) 17:42, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose Seriously, a whole subsection on this? Not just a sentence, or a footnote, but a whole ===Subsection=== just about headlines? No, thanks, that's too WP:CREEPy for me. I wonder whether the supporters – pinging Schierbecker, Bilorv, Meters, Doug, and Pincrete as being the most recent – actually think their concerns about headlines really require an entire ===Subsection=== in WP:RS, or if they might settle for something a little less verbose. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:14, 18 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Comment I don't care whether it is a subsection or something else, as long as it is made clear. Are you opposing simply because you don't want to see it as a subsection?Meters (talk) 23:22, 18 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
      Meters, for clarity, I think it's a bad idea to add this, because we are not having any actual problems with this. We should not endlessly expand guidelines to cover situations that are easily handled in normal, everyday discussions. But if and only if we have to have a statement about such a common sense thing, then let's not create a whole separate ===Subsection=== for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:40, 19 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Ditto Whether it be a sentence, a phrase or a sub-section doesn't seem to matter, To be honest I hadn't noticed 'sub-section", but whatever briefly makes the point clear works for me. Pincrete (talk) 09:24, 19 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • @WhatamIdoing: I'm not clear on what you're suggesting. "Less verbose" than what—I can't see any specific prose mentioned here. For the sake of argument, let's agree that we need to add some text somewhere about headlines. In this hypothetical case, where in our policies and guidelines do you put the text? — Bilorv (talk) 11:26, 19 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
      I'm not convinced that it's needed. No evidence is given that there are intractable disputes around this. But you don't normally propose the creation of a whole ===Subsection=== if you only want to stick one sentence or a footnote into a guideline. Currently, the shortest subsection in that guideline is three sentences long, and most of them are multiple paragraphs.
      If we truly need to say this, even though there are apparently no ongoing disputes about editors trying to cite the headline "The Sun is Really Big" when the body of the source says the opposite, or when the source doesn't mention the Sun's size at all except in the headline, then a quick mention in the existing WP:NEWSORG subsection would IMO be more than adequate. Or maybe we should consider a general admonition to read the whole source, not just the two sentences you saw in Google Book's snippet view, or the headline you read on a paywalled news article, and to only cite a source in support of a sentence if the overall thrust of the source is towards supporting that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:38, 19 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong Support. Headlines, in mass media, are the most creative part of any text: their aim is not to convey as much information as possible but focus on the part that attracts the most attention. (It was not always like this. Newspapers of yore used to carry a lot of information in their headlines, especially the front-page ones, and space be damned: Check out a typical New York Times headline here.) Headlines cut corners, are imprecise, generalize, and do not follow sources too closely. In our day and age, in particular, the age of click-baiting, the focus has shifted even more away from accuracy and towards attracting attention. Headlines today are generally the least reliable part of an article.
    Who says this? Well, myriads of sources, e.g. the Harvard Business Review here (" if only the media were less distractible and headlines more accurate"); statistical research such as this ("Functionally speaking, headlines are simplifying mechanisms that summarize and attract attention to what lies below. Headlines and full-text stories both have been separately coded for emphasis.The analysis shows a considerable difference between articles and their headlines in terms of emphasis and issue salience. [Readers] who scanned headlines were supplied with a different set of heuristic cues than those paying closer attention"); articles such as this in The New Yorker by psychologist Maria Konnikova, tellingly titled "How Headlines Change the Way We Think"; etc. -The Gnome (talk) 10:08, 23 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. Normally any headline-content should be reflected in the body of an article. If the headline isn't reflected in the body of an article, there are good reasons to call the reliability into question. It is known that headlines can skew to sensationalism to draw attention, or be oversimplified for space reasons, and that they do not always go through the full normal editorial process. I believe I recall some news authors expressing unpleasant surprise at how some headlines had been drastically rewritten late in the process.
    As some have commented, it's fine or even preferable if this can be added as a sentence rather than a full section. And to explicitly note an obvious technicality, a headline is of course reliable for the purpose of documenting itself. Alsee (talk) 23:28, 23 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. I don't clickbait has anything to do with it. I've concluded that articles are written by journalists and headlines by interns. A recent headline elsewhere reported that bats fly further than wildebeest and caribou. I'm sure the underlying article was better crafted.Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 23:45, 23 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • OPPOSE I don't see any evidence of this being such a great problem we need a rule on it. Dream Focus 04:04, 27 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose – I do not buy into the idea that we should excuse publications that write misleading headlines and I would like to see a write up of the proposed addition. While I support the idea, I am hesistant this addition will be used in debates to excuse publications, as a counter to the argument that misleading headlines form a portion of the evidence against the reliability of a publication. I would like an additional sentence or footnote that to that effect repudiating such misuse. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 17:36, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support headlines are written to sell papers (old world) or as click bait (new world) thus they tend towards sensationalism not accuracy. MarnetteD|Talk 18:42, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose This proposal and many comments supporting it (note references to "clickbait" and "interns"), suffer from recent-ism. Historic headlines, for example, may be both reliable and useful. Editors should be trusted to exercise good judgement, and to make choices depending on the circumstances. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:52, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. I mean, we're talking about using headlines to reference statements of fact, right? Well when the heck are you going to ref a headline when the accompanying article doesn't support the assertion??? Never I hope. If you have a headline "Senator Smith Says New Monetary Policy May Spark Inflation" but the article doesn't say that -- Smith said no such thing, or what he did say was far more complex and bound about with conditions and exceptions -- are we really going to write "In 2020, Smith said that the new monetary policy might cause inflation" amd ref that to the headline??? Really? Wouldn't that be... bad? Herostratus (talk) 03:36, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support If there is useful and reliable content in the text after the headline, use that. If there isn't, the headline is misleading. Exception of using headlines as a source for themselves as headlines. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:31, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose strongly. A headline is usually the most important point that an author is trying to convey to the reader. Therefore, this is something which deserved a special attention by the reader. Claiming that it must be ignored is absurd. Yes, a headline may or may not be strongly supported by the content of the article. This must be checked on the case to case basis. Usually it is supported to significant degree. Making a declaration in advance that [all] headlines are unreliable [content] goes against our core Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. It is just as reliable or unreliable as any other content in a publication. My very best wishes (talk) 14:39, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Headlines are rarely written by the author of an article. The editorial staff is in charge of those and they are trying to get clicks or sell papers. MarnetteD|Talk 15:17, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • Why do you think so? The titles of scientific articles are always written by authors of the publications; the editorial staff has nothing to do with this. Do you mean that in newspapers the titles of the publications are written without consent of their authors? Any studies to support such claim? My very best wishes (talk) 19:48, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
        • The Gnome gave some rather good sources in their post above, it's worth a read they put it better than I could.[9][10][11] Do you have anything that supports the notion that titles of scientific articles are always written by authors? I don't think I have ever seen that before. PackMecEng (talk) 20:03, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
          • These publications make an excellent point that in addition to reading the headline, one must read the entire publication and think what it actually tells, because the headlines are occasionally misleading and always oversimplifications. I completely agree with this. But it does not justifie that the headlines should be simply ignored, as this WP proposal suggests. To the contrary, the reader should pay a special attention to the title. That is exactly what authors of the cited publications did. As about scientific papers, well, it does happen, although not often, that a reviewer (not editor) suggests to change the title of a paper, but in all such cases it results in a better title. My very best wishes (talk) 20:28, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
            • Does Awilley’s alternate proposal below — with its if, may be, and often —adequately address your concerns? Humanengr (talk) 22:47, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
              No, absolutely not. They suggests the following: "Headlines are written too quickly and briefly grab readers' attention, and may be overstated or lack context. They are often written by copy editors instead of the researchers and journalists who wrote the articles". This is simply not true, but exactly the opposite. Yes, the title of your paper or a book grabs the reader's attention. Everyone knows that. Therefore, all authors (even such as me) spend a lot of time to properly title their articles, so this is actually a good descriptive title to properly reflect the idea of the publication. Speaking about researchers, no one ever decides the title for them. A reviewer or an editor might suggest something (this is a very rare occasion), but it is exclusively authors who decide the title.My very best wishes (talk) 03:25, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
        • For traditional print newspapers, headlines are written by copy editors experienced at doing so because they need to fit the headlines into the available space like a puzzle, while respecting various rules for layout, succinctness, and revealing the main point of the story without stealing its thunder. See "How to Write a New York Times Headline" for more details. Also see "Hey, Google! Check Out This Column on Headlines" on how the need to put keywords in the headlines has changed things, including an expanded set of editors who may write or tweak headlines. On the web, layout considerations are much less important, but the other rules remain. isaacl (talk) 05:07, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. If the body of an article does not make the point that the headline does (which does happen), the headline alone should not be relied upon to source content in an article. Schazjmd (talk) 15:15, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Schazjmd (immediately above me). - Dank (push to talk) 03:50, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. This has to be done in this age of clickbait and a hyper-competitive media environment. It's not instruction creep, it's necessary instruction. We should not be making it easier for sensational or POV article content to be pushed on the basis of a headline as a source. Crossroads -talk- 03:33, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per the sources provided by the Gnome. Historical headlines may not suffer as much from sensationalism, but if their content is not included in the article, I still think that they shouldn't be used as a source for facts. There are case-by-case exceptions when it makes sense to use or quote the headline, but the general rule still applies. (t · c) buidhe 23:08, 9 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Discussion (Headlines)

Notified: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources, Wikipedia talk:Verifiability, Wikipedia talk:A headline is not a reliable source, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Reliability. — Newslinger talk 01:40, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
— Newslinger talk 01:46, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Notified: Template:Centralized discussion. — Newslinger talk 01:49, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I've seen it many times.North8000 (talk) 15:34, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

According to our annotation, Business Insider sends 51 % clickbait, followed by Huffington Post, The Independent, BuzzFeed, and the Washington Post with more than 40 % each. Most online-only news publishers (Business Insider, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Mashable) send at least 33 % clickbait, Bleacher Report being the only exception with a little less than 10 %. TV networks (CNN, NBC, ABC, Fox) are generally at the low end of the distribution. Altogether, these figures suggest that all of the top 20 news publishers employ clickbait on a regular basis, supporting the allegations raised by bloggers. Potthast, M., Köpsel, S., Stein, B., & Hagen, M. (2016). Clickbait Detection. Advances in Information Retrieval, 810–817. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-30671-1_72 --Pudeo (talk) 20:30, 14 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Notified: Talk:Piers Robinson#Forge. Humanengr (talk) 06:20, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • As I said above, again and again I have seen a story from the AP printed by different newspapers with wildly different headlines over the exact same story, and the headlines were often misleading clickbait. What is to stop a POV-pushing editor from selectively choosing the headline that supports his POV? Also, Wikipedia citations list the actual author when we know it, but authors typically have no control over headlines. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:26, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Workshop (Headlines)

Headlines

Headlines are not reliable, even if the remainder of the source is considered reliable. Headlines are often written by specialists who are not the researchers and journalists who write the articles, and may contain claims that are not adequately supported by the remainder of the source.

Ideally, the guideline should also address subheadlines and other types of labels or captions that are commonly seen in news articles. — Newslinger talk 01:33, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Some editors in past discussions have also suggested similar guidance for titles and chapter/section names of books and other publications. — Newslinger talk 01:54, 10 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I think a guideline for chapter/section names in books is definitely too WP:CREEPy. I've never seen anybody try to use the title of a chapter as a source. Ever. I have seen people try to use headlines as sources, which is part of why I support the original proposal. ~Awilley (talk) 00:40, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Also re captions, I see News Co/Lab's Students Guide to Information Disorders: 5. False connection: Headlines, visuals and captions that don’t support the content … re clickbait: eye-catching headlines, visuals and captions that draw readers in, but don’t match the content with captions can often give a certain impression that’s not backed up by the text. This is especially deceptive when people get their news from headlines as they’re scrolling through social media. Humanengr (talk) 06:26, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Here's an alternate proposal:

News headlines are not a reliable source if the information in the headline is not explicitly supported in the body of the source. Headlines are written to quickly and briefly grab readers' attention, and may be overstated or lack context. They are often written by copy editors instead of the researchers and journalists who wrote the articles.

This takes a slightly softer approach by specifying when they aren't reliable. ~Awilley (talk) 00:40, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

That's good and better than the first version, but explicitly noting that headlines are a reliable source for themselves when they are the subject would be better still. Thryduulf (talk) 01:25, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Agree, as per Jayron32 for notable headlines. Humanengr (talk) 06:33, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I'd avoid using the word "notable" as that implies they are notable enough to be the subject of an article, which is extremely rare. Rather most of the headlines we mention are noteworthy only in the context of a much larger article (e.g. the topic the headline is about, a phrase used in the headline, the publication the headline ran in, etc). "Note worthy" might be better but I'm not sure. Thryduulf (talk) 09:36, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Agree with Thryduulf. A (very) few headlines are noteworthy in themselves, particularly if they are taken up by other media or by politicians. See Gotcha for an example. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:57, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
To clarify, I used the word "notable" in the normal sense, not in the Wiki sense. I meant "Some headlines are historically important in themselves and worth talking about". Those are different from "using a headline as a footnoted source to justify some text at Wikipedia" which we should never do. In other words, we can talk about the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" for its own historical significance, but that headline should never be used to verify the statement like "In the 1948 Presidential election, Thomas Dewey defeated incumbent Harry S Truman" That would be wrong. --Jayron32 14:26, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Use case: as w/ Gotcha, cite by secondary as headline qua headline? Humanengr (talk) 15:05, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Isn't this a bit redundant as any headline we want to mention in this context is going to be mentioned in secondary sources anyway. AIRcorn (talk) 22:53, 14 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Exactly. What Aircorn said. Any headline notable enough to be discussed in an encyclopedia will have secondary sources. ~Awilley (talk) 03:45, 15 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I don't want to get bogged down in one particular example, but if discussing a headline (using secondary sources) it is a bit stupid not to link to the primary if available so that readers can see what is being talked about. Would not seeing the Sun's front page improve comprehension, or would it just pander to "creepy" wikilawyers? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 07:17, 15 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
There's nothing wrong with linking to the actual headlines in this context. Or even showing a small fair use screenshot of the newspaper itself like at in our article on Headlines. It would be like using a WP:PRIMARY or WP:SELFSOURCE with a secondary source to demonstrate notability. Of course none of this would need to be codified in policy. We're way into Creep territory already. This is just common sense I think. ~Awilley (talk) 14:41, 15 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Agree that headlines via secondary sources need not be codified. (Apologies that my attempt to incorporate suggestions/criticisms contributed to this mini rabbit hole.) Humanengr (talk) 00:03, 16 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Awilley, Maybe fold in per Newslinger at start of 2nd sentence: Headlines, subheadlines, and other types of labels or captions that are commonly seen in news articles.. Humanengr (talk) 16:05, 12 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Humanengr: I don't support treating captions the same as (sub-)headlines. While concision is often important when captioning (especially image captions), clickbaiting is not and sensationalism usually correlates pretty accurately with the sensationalism of the prose, unlikle with headlines. Thryduulf (talk) 11:47, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Humanengr: in response to your email (which did not (afaict) include anything that could not have been written here), yes there are examples of captions saying different things to the body of the article but that is nowhere near the same extent as (sub-)headlines and so should be discussed separately. Thryduulf (talk) 09:56, 14 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
We still need to change "not a reliable source" to "generally not a reliable source" per the RSP norm. Otherwise, we'll be deprecating Atlantic headlines more strongly than National Enquirer body text, which would be absurd. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:14, 23 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Resolve the inconsistency between WP:DRAFTIFY and WP:ATD

Latest comment: 3 years ago42 comments29 people in discussion
There is consensus for option 1, i.e. the idea that moving articles to draft space is generally appropriate in only two cases: 1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created. Specifically, the consensus here is that the policy at WP:ATD-I should be updated to be consistent with the advice at WP:DRAFTIFY.
Many editors expressed concern that unilateral draftification in situations other than the two above is similar to a "backdoor to deletion" because very few editors review and improve random drafts, and after six months of inactivity, dormant drafts are automatically deleted via WP:G13. (Note: my reading of this discussion is that the phrase "backdoor to deletion" is not a judgment about any editor's good faith, but rather a mere description of a situation.) Instead of unilaterally draftifying an unsuitable-for-mainspace article that is not newly created, editors should instead nominate the article for deletion, e.g. via WP:PROD or WP:AFD. Respectfully, Mz7 (talk) 21:26, 13 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

WP:DRAFTIFY seems to allow draftification in only two cases: 1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created. In addition, WP:DRAFTIFY's calling out of "backdoor to deletion" seems bad-faith-accusatory. On the other hand, WP:ATD has no such limitations; the WP:ATD-I section simply says articles that are not ready for the mainspace can be draftified, with the implication that an article that has sat unsourced (or inadequately sourced) for years could nonetheless be draftified, and/or that an article with a WP:PROD/WP:BLPPROD tag on it could be draftifed without discussion. I am seeking consensus here on Option 1: WP:DRAFTIFY's more limited approach (and rewrite WP:ATD accordingly); or Option 2: WP:ATD's more permissive approach (and rewrite WP:DRAFTIFY accordingly). UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:31, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Support Option 2 Look, I'm a pretty strong deletionist, but my view here is that six months in draft space, with a AfC template that is applied by the draftify script, can often be better than seven days with a WP:PROD tag (or even less time with an A7 tag): draftifying can have a higher likelihood of resulting in a viable article (and the creator is more likely to see the user talk notice before the article is deleted/more likely to use the draftspace going forward). This advantage is even more likely since the script adds the draft's talk page to any relevant WikiProject's Draft-class category, and the projects can make review of that cat part of their regular workflow. Of course, adopting this option would not require draftification, just have it as an available alternative. Pinging @Bradv:, with thanks for making me aware of the inconsistency. UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:32, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Option 1 Draftifying is a "backdoor to deletion". Any user who can move a page can draftify any article that isn't move protected, the redirect left behind is deleted via CSD WP:R2, and 6 months later, the article now in draft space is deleted by CSD WP:G13. With all other deletion methods, objecting users can easily see the article and the deletion notice and raise their objections, and the deleting admin must be sure the deletion criteria are met before deleting. With draftifying, the only way any user could object is if they knew of the article's existense before it was draftified, or if they were notified of the draftification. The AFC template doesn't solve the problem either unless someone submits the draft to AFC, which in the case of draftified articles, should be treated as an objection to the initial draftification and moved back to mainspace (and possibly WP:AFD). Iffy★Chat -- 16:20, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I think I would support some kind of hybrid option based on the reasonableness of the above two options. 1) I like the draft system because it allows for more time to work on articles before they hit the main space and get tagged for deletion immediately. The ability to draftify a bad article is useful. 2) I don't like if articles are draftified against the creator's wishes without discussion. IF a creator requests it or IF it is draftified as the result of an AFD discussion, I consider that OK, but draftifying without the knowledge of active editors, it can lead to the kind of abuses noted by Iffy. If and only if the creator and other significant contributors to an article are made aware of the nature of draftification (removal from the main space, no redirect left behind, could be deleted if left dormant for 6 months) then it's a great system. --Jayron32 16:27, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 2, because it's less bureaucratic - I mainly use it as a much kinder alternative to G11 / A7, both of which are issues that age does not fix. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:30, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 2. The accusation that draftification is backdoor deletion is not well-supported. I have seen several instances of draftified articles being improved and restored to mainspace. Generally, an article that is draftified and then later deleted is one that could not be improved, because the sources never existed or developed to allow it to exist in mainspace. To be sure, though, I have created Category:Content moved from mainspace to draftspace to track content moved to draftspace from mainspace, to distinguish it from material originating in draftspace that was merely never promoted. BD2412 T 16:39, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for adding the cat, perhaps you can also put a bot request so the pages from User:JJMC89 bot/report/Draftifications/monthly are automatically categorized there. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:54, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
"The accusation that draftification is backdoor deletion is not well-supported"... except for Guy saying, nine minutes before your comment was posted (so you probably didn't see it), that he uses draftifying as a way to get articles deleted in a "kinder" fashion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:20, 18 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 2. I don't think of draftifying as a sneaky deletion, but rather as a second chance for an <insert>newly-created</insert> article that is unsuited for mainspace in its present state. If send-to-draft wasn't available, I suspect many/most would just be nominated for deletion (whether speedy, prod, or AfD). I like RoySmith's suggestion of notifying projects, for articles that have any. edit to add after following comments I only think of sending to draft when it's a newly created article; I wasn't aware of it being done to established articles, and it doesn't seem like a useful option at that point. Schazjmd (talk) 17:42, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1 If it's not suitable for mainspace and the article was not recently created, it should go to AFD not draft space. The community has the right to discuss what should happen to established articles, and there is potential harm in unilaterally draftifying (i.e., removing from mainspace without a redirect) articles which have been around more than a trivial amount of time. The page may be linked externally or readers may have see it and expect it to be there when they come back. Draftification is only appropriate for recently created article with rare exceptions. This is the point of DRAFTIFY's language about not being a "backdoor" to deletion, not accusations of bad faith. If something should be deleted, we shouldn't wait 6 months to do so, and if the article has been around a while, we should not remove it from mainspace unilaterally. Draftification isn't a "soft" delete, and it shouldn't be used as a substitute for our deletion processes. Given that it removes reader facing material without any review, we should be more restrictive with its use cases, not less. — Wug·a·po·des​ 19:28, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1 per Wugapodes. Draftifying articles as an alternative to deletion should only be done for brand-new articles where the author is still available to work on it, or in cases where someone asks to put it in draftspace so they can fix it up to avoid deletion. Otherwise we're just quietly disappearing articles without any review. – bradv🍁 19:37, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Those concerns can be eliminated with the implementation of the correct monitoring structure. A category tree of monthly mainspace-to-draft moves and a triage report of drafts in that category set to be deleted for inactivity would do it. Bear in mind, of course, that if an article with a stack of maintenance tags at the top is moved to draft, and no one notices, that means that no one considered it important enough to pay attention to that development in the first place. BD2412 T 20:23, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • That just creates yet another group of pages and categories that people need to monitor. If an established article is not suitable for mainspace it should be improved or nominated at AfD, where there are existing, well-established reporting and monitoring structures that allow the opportunity for community review. Remember that this process is available for all articles, not just those with "a stack of maintenance templates". Yes AfD is overloaded, but the solution to that is not to loosen standards of deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 20:27, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • (edit conflict) Option 1 per Wugapodes and Bradv. Draftification should be an option at AfD though if someone asks for it to placed there so they can work on it. Option 2 could see any article, however good or bad, sent to draftspace and then quietly deleted 6 months later without anyone really being aware of it. For this reason I'd also like to make it mandatory to inform all editors with significant contributions to an article of it being moved to draft space, regardless of why it is so moved. Thryduulf (talk) 20:24, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • MIXED OPINION - 1) New articles that have potential (but don’t currently pass muster) can be draftified without the need for AFD. Proper notification should be given to the creator and any contributors. 2) Older articles can be draftified, but only as a result of consensus at AFD. Appropriate notifications should be given, but this should be flexible (presumably some contributors were notified of the AFD, and so were already following the discussion... no need for further notification). Blueboar (talk) 20:53, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1 Though I always hesitate to increase bureaucracy, draftifying pages that won't have anyone edit them is definitely bad practice. If that means more AfD's, so be it. I think drafification should be used sparingly, and mainly on new pages (or for paid trash). It should only be used on old pages when it is assured that there is an editor who will save the article. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 21:43, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1 Best to let the Community consider it properly, even if it ups the AfD count a bit. I think PRODing is used too rarely, but in any case, the negative consequences are less severe with option 1. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:51, 13 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1. Moving to draft space for "incubation" inevitably means eventual G13 deletion if it is an old article. This really is backdoor deletion. The idea that someone is going to notice and work on it in draft is simple fantasy. Its best chance of someone improving it is an editor stumbling on it through an incoming wikilink. If it really doesn't belong then AFD is the correct process. Deletion by default because it is not "upt to scratch" is definitely the wrong process. SpinningSpark 01:10, 14 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1. If the page isn't notable, it's better to deal with the problem directly. If it is about a notable subject, then we shouldn't risk it being "accidentally" deleted six months later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:22, 18 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 2 per JzG -- less beaurocratic and there is more room for variation in application. The draft space is meant to house new articles per WP:DRAFT as well as (to a certain extent) those needing incubation because of the need for improvement. Per WP:WAFC, the WP:AFC process (which the used draft space as a part of) is to peer review new articles. P,TO 19104 (talk) (contribs) 00:22, 22 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1 Draftification is deletion from the outset because the entry in mainspace is deleted using the delete function and shows up as such in the deletion log. Proper deletion processes are therefore required. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:27, 25 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1 I agree, many use draftification to try to eliminate articles without going through the proper process. I've had that happen to me, and then just moved it back to mainspace, pointing out it had reliable sources confirming it meant the notability guidelines. There is no reason to let people have a backdoor to deletion. Dream Focus 17:03, 25 August 2020 (UTC).Reply
  • Comment Looks like the discussion os dying down; I'll request closure shortly. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:40, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1 at least with prod, CSD and AFD the deleted edits remain in mainspace. Lots of things get deleted from draftspace that would not meet the CSD criteria, and many that I think would survive AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 10:14, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1 I too have seen articles moved on notable topics that would pass AFD, and while certainly needing improvement, were better than other mainspace stubs that have existed for years. They are more likely to be improved in mainspace. MB 14:36, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1 Send an old article to the AfD instead of draftifying them. In AfD, the community can decide within some couple of days if the article can be improved or deleted. But for new articles that shouldn't exist in the mainspace, I don't see anything bad if they're sent to the draftspace. —Nnadigoodluck🇳🇬 14:52, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Edit: mixed feelings. Content should be preserved whenever possible. Benjamin (talk) 22:24, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Benjaminikuta:, except I'm concerned that we aren't really upping the preservation rate this way, just having it deleted a bit slower and without any substantive review Nosebagbear (talk) 13:05, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Benjaminikuta: option 1 preserves more content than option 2. With option 1 there is a requirement to do a WP:BEFORE prior to nomination which means that only content that has a likelihood of deletion gets nominated and there is a community review immediately afterwards that ensures content that should be kept is not deleted. With option 2 content that may or may not be worth keeping is shunted off to draft space only to be deleted six months later without anyone looking at it. Thryduulf (talk) 13:10, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment - there is a third option, although we don’t use it as often as we once did: USERFICATION. Blueboar (talk) 23:42, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Userfication is fine if it is going to an active user who is actually going to work on it. But if it is going to a creator who is long gone off Wikipedia, then it is just another way of sending the article away to die without a proper review. Besides which, pages should not be userfied on the whim of one editor. That's actually worse than moving to draft. It should only be done for articles that have failed at AFD or meet some CSD criterion. SpinningSpark 14:09, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Draftspace is slightly more trawled by users looking for good drafts. However, a draft in userspace exists indefinitely unless action is taken upon it, while a draft in draftspace is deleted after six inactive months (see G13). Thus draftspace may lead more quickly to a removal from public view; WP:DUD. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 21:38, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
"Draftspace is slightly more trawled..." Not really, there is close to zero probability of an article in draft being reviewed unless it is actually submitted to AFC. But userfication should only be done at the request of, or by agreement with, the user concerned. It should never be in the spirit of a teacher handing back a piece of work with the comment "must try better", and absolutely never if there is a low probability of the user actually working on it, or even noticing it has happened. SpinningSpark 09:13, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1. Draftification is a unilateral move that doesn't require admin oversight, so there should be a very low bar for overturning it. Draftifying a new article gives the creator a chance to either improve the article so that it is ready for mainspace, or to contest the draftification, in which case a formal deletion process should be used. When an old article is draftified it's much less likely that anyone will notice it, even with the new tracking categories - an article being listed in a category doesn't have the same immediacy as an active editor receiving a message on their talk page. If an old article clearly doesn't belong in mainspace it should not be difficult to get it deleted through PROD or AFD; if it has issues such as being undersourced, promotional, etc. but doesn't qualify for deletion then it should be tagged or fixed, not moved to draftspace where it will almost certainly be deleted in six months' time. Spicy (talk) 15:38, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 2, restricted to when the author is still around which is what I have sometimes been using--not as a softer approach, but as one that sometimes can be more likely to be noticed. There are people patrolling material added to drafts, and an effort is made to clear up the ones that are improvable. In the course of the 6 months, typically several reviewers will have looked at the draft. I know that I, personally, check everything within my scope that is. about to be deleted via G13: I do rescue perhaps 5% of them, but the other 95% are well gone. Furthermore, if an article is eleted via G13, it is normally very easy for the author to ask for it back; that is not he case after deletion via AfD. DGG ( talk ) 02:57, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 2, restricted to when the author is still around. After reading this discussion, and after reading DGG's input I agree with Jayron and DGG, including the caveat. Their input addressed my concern that dratifying a years-old article might be sending it to the grave yard. I have draftifyed articles in the past and didn't have a problem with it, until this discussion. For me, draftifying was not about side-stepping the deletion process. But it seems there are others who think this is so, and this should be taken into consideration.
As long as we are not side-stepping deletion, then I am OK with the status quo for reviewers. It does take some of the load off AfD. I agree that article authors should be notified, and if we can set this up as an automatic process, like what happens when I propose CSD, PROD, and AfD, this would be helpful. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 04:57, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1 - It is essentially backdoor deletion after six months when an article is draftified, given the current state of G13. Furthermore, it is potentially indefinite exclusion of potentially viable content from the sight of our readers on a whim (without any community checks, e.g. AfD). Draftification of a mainspace page should be extremely limited; the text at DRAFTIFY is better guidance. If something survives in the mainspace for several months or especially years, it should not be unilaterally removed. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 21:34, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1. I have long criticized the practice of removing content from the mainspace by way of draftifying for the reasons mentioned above. And whatever those in favor might argue, once a draft is removed, the chances it will be deleted after six months per G13 are extremely high, thus making it indeed a backdoor deletion without any real oversight. In prior discussions, I had compiled a list of such moves and it was pretty extensive (can't find them all at the moment but quarry:44979 for example lists 10,000 such moves done by script within the last 11 months alone). I'm pretty sure that most of those never were moved back. Yes, draftifying can be an alternative to deletion, but only, if deletion would otherwise be the only possible outcome. Currently we have hundreds of moves made just because of the article being "undersourced" (these are examples from the last two hours(!) alone: [12] [13] [14] [15] [16][17] [18] [19] [20] [21]). Admins should be able to draftify if they believe the creator is able and willing to improve the article and if the article were otherwise eligible for speedy deletion (G11, A7 etc.) but not just any user who goes around thinking something needs more sources. At the very least, draftifying without the creator's consent should be treated as the deletion it actually is. Regards SoWhy 12:19, 9 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Option 1 Unless it is a new article with the author still around, or unless someone at an AfD agrees to take it on, it is just going disappear into the void and get deleted after six months.-- P-K3 (talk) 13:07, 9 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

policy on women and children killed by their spouse/father?

Latest comment: 3 years ago10 comments9 people in discussion

Hi This has been raised with regard to Murder of Hannah Clarke who was murdered by her estranged husband. Should Wikipedia have her referred to in the article as "Hannah Baxter", the name used in the Murdoch tabloids? There seems to be a growing idea in society that wives and children murdered by their husband and father should *not* be referred to by his surname posthumously because he murdered them. PAustin4thApril1980 (talk) 21:13, 16 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Surely the question is what name did she call herself immediately prior to the incident? Since she was estranged she might have reverted to her maiden name; but if she, and the children, were called Baxter at the time we should respect her choice. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:44, 16 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Her married name was Baxter but she and her children are buried under her birth name of Clarke. PAustin4thApril1980 (talk) 22:00, 16 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Could also be argued that the relevant bit is what reliable sources refer to it as. They seem to have a bit of split (within, not just between) them as to what to do in cases like this. I suspect we'll probably enter a local consensus bit at some stage, but I feel the majority probably remains on not using maiden names. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:58, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
I would ask for a source that there is a growing idea in society in this direction. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 19:45, 17 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
Stick with WP:COMMONNAME and let reliable sources sort out how to refer to people. We're not in any position to weigh up questions of self-identification or the wishes of the deceased's friends and family. --RaiderAspect (talk) 15:11, 19 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
As above, WP:COMMONNAME in reliable sources. If she was reported as Hannah Baxter then she should be referred to as Hannah Baxter. Wikipedia is not in the revisionism business. We report facts as they are, not as some would like them to be. I would also point out that's it's not just the "Murdoch tabloids" which call her Hannah Baxter; the Guardian and the BBC (neither known for any sort of right-wing bias) do too. It does appear that in her case she probably had reverted to her maiden name and her name may earlier have been misreported, but that doesn't mean every woman murdered in these circumstances should be referred to by their maiden name by default. It depends on the reliable sources. As to the children, their surname presumably was still Baxter, whatever their mother may have wanted it to be. It's not up to one parent to pick and choose what underage children's surnames are. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:30, 19 August 2020 (UTC)Reply
The article cites a source that has this footnote: "This story previously named the children's mother as Hannah Baxter. The Queensland Police Service has since informed media she had legally been using her maiden name ‘Clarke’ and no longer used her married name of Baxter."[22] We should follow that lead. Fences&Windows 17:31, 25 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

The only policy we should have on this is "follow the sources". In most cases that will mean using the WP:COMMONNAME but it allows for exceptions where there is a specific reason to follow a minority option (e.g. there is a reliable source indicating the subject's clear wishes are/were something other than what the majority of sources are using). It is not our place to right great wrongs, especially when it is not clear that the status quo is actually a wrong in all cases. Thryduulf (talk) 13:16, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Request for comment on Notability essay on awards and medals

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Essay: Wikipedia:Notability (awards and medals)

There were three recent AfDs ([23], [24], [25]) which were closed as no consensus and contained some controversial claims about "state awards are always notable". In addition one of these AfDs was cited by BD2412 as an example of a difficult close at a general AfD discussion.

I would like comments on this essay and improving it in order to help discussions at AfDs. Thank you.

  • Improving an essay won't really help clarify the question unless you want to submit it as an explanatory supplement to an SNG. While there are some essays we use as shorthand in AfD, in terms of actually showing that notability is being met (or not), they don't have any value. If people are using it as binding, that's its own issue Nosebagbear (talk) 09:01, 28 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

The maintenance of categories, lists and info boxes

Latest comment: 3 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Hoi, it is well known that some English Wikipedians are not a fan of Wikidata. It is why I propose a mechanism that will only flag information that needs updating but will update information at Wikidata and where updates are accepted. The idea is simple; many categories are defined for their content.. There is even a Wikidata property for it. A category should contain all articles that fulfill its specific definition eg "educated at Harvard" or "faculty of Harvard". When an editor checks a category, it will be flagged that there are missing entries. When an editor checks an article, it will indicate missing categories. It is then for the editor to act upon it.

I am working on a project to include data on cabinet level politicians in Africa. I find that much of the English Wikipedia needs work. An example is the Moroccan minister of Health who is indicated as the incumbent but already had two successors.Typically the content of English Wikipedia is really good and it is where I go first for content. However, because of categories in other Wikipedias I notice the missing information and use those Wikipedias as a source and complement the data that I have.

I blogged about it, I have thought about it for a long time. I understand where some do not want to import information from Wikidata but this is exactly the opposite. In this way there is a tool that helps you find the information that is out of date, incomplete. It is up to you to make English Wikipedia as good as it can be.

Thanks, GerardM (talk) 07:53, 30 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

GerardM How would this work from the ordinary Wikboipedian's viewpoint? In concept it looks like it could be a useful tool. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:41, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Given that local edits are possible .. It would add a template on the article, the category. From the template you find what it is that can be done. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 11:59, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
GerardM, similar to Peter, I'm not sure how this would work from a technical perspective, but I like the general idea of it. I've been recently working on an alumni list page, and I've had to use PetScan to try to compile lists of potentially missing entries for the many pages that were categorized but not part of the list article or vice versa. That sometimes worked, but sometimes didn't, and it was a slow manual process. Having more advanced/integrated tools to make sure that entries make their way from |alma mater=Harvard College in the infobox to "educated at"-->"Harvard College" at Wikidata to Category:Harvard College alumni to a listing (if appropriate) at List of Harvard College alumni would be extremely useful, and that same network presumably applies to many other topics as well. My understanding is that Wikidata is meant to ultimately serve as the main repository for that kind of information, but it's not quite there yet. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:06, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
I just updated many "educated at" "Harvard college" in Wikidata based on the info in the category. This is easy enough given the statements in Wikidata for its category. I prefer a bot who runs regularly for en:categories that apply. It will be possible to learn using query what articles are not on the category. Thanks, 14:41, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

RfC on notability guidelines related to shopping malls

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

There is an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#RfC on shopping malls and notability guidelines regarding guidelines and the notability of shopping malls.

Question: Should existing guidelines be clarified (or a new guideline created) to provide more guidance between what is considered routine run of the mill coverage and what coverage will establish notability?

Thank you.   // Timothy :: talk  01:08, 31 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Request to stop non-encyclopedic self advertising

Latest comment: 3 years ago23 comments13 people in discussion

Please stop this "Wiki loves monuments" nonsense. We are not a person, but a brilliant encyclopedia for people seeking information. "Send a photo and win..." - so distasteful! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.8.131.123 (talk) 07:33, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

I agree. I wouldn't have bothered to start a discussion about it, but now that it's here, I resent the milliseconds I have to spend dismissing it. SpinningSpark 07:49, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
By the way, I have the Wikilove option unchecked in preferences, so its pretty obvious I don't want Wikilove banner messages. SpinningSpark 09:15, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
I don't think that WikiLove-the-profile-option is related to the banner messages which are titled "Wiki loves", despite the similar name. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:21, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Still don't want it. SpinningSpark 14:53, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I mean, I am perfectly happy with the "thanks" being enabled and so on, but I am against these banners. I can't disable every banner, but advertorial campaigning ones like this I can do without Nosebagbear (talk) 09:54, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I don't mind the encouragement or the winning of something; I do mind the "love" opinion being put in the project voice for things that are not integral to the effort. "Wikipedia loves the disseminating of human knowledge" would be fine. "Wikipedia loves reliable sources"? Great. But monuments? Some folks thing they're horrible or inappropriate, tying the world to one vision of the past... and at a time when someone monuments are being torn down (with good reason), I don't think we need to be telling folks "if you dislike monuments or are merely ambivalent about them, Wikipedia is not for you." --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:34, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    In practice, a lot of these so-called "monuments", such as the National Register of Historic Places in the US, are actually mostly architecture, which is much less likely to be objectionable because it was generally built for a functional purpose rather than solely to glorify a person or thing. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:54, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    King of Hearts, that may be true, but when people see "Wiki loves monuments", they're going to make assumptions, not check a statistically random sampling of monument pages to ascertain the precise characteristics of the group being referred to. I agree with NatGertler that this is not a good look for us, and that the phrasing should have been thought through more carefully. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 01:56, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    @NatGertler: The "Wiki Loves X" naming schema is very problematic (even more so for some other topics...), but nobody's ever put forward a proposal for an alternative name for such contests. It's been used regularly over the past decade, and the name limits the topics we can have such contests for, causes occasional neutrality issues, and sometimes strikes the wrong tone for an encyclopedia. --Yair rand (talk) 03:42, 8 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Courtesy pinging Romaine and Ciell, who appear to be the main contacts for the banner, per meta:CentralNotice/Request/Wiki Loves Monuments 2020. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 01:57, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the pings - i got pinged in turn. First, let me clarify a bit of terminology because I have the feeling we have multiple discussions mixed together:
  • Wiki Loves Monuments is an annual photo competition. The word 'monument' refers to a set of (protected) historic sites that are determined by the government. This definition is different in each country, and many years ago we bit the bullet and went with the word 'monument' which seems to describe his pretty well in a majority of the countries. Notably in the US, this is often confused with 'statues', which are at most a subset. The US would indeed use NRHP but also state and city registers. Most sites are old buildings, things that are part of what we need to remember as society - and that we may want to document for Wikipedia. It is also an outreach effort to engage more people in our movement. And successfully: A majority of participants never contributed to Wikimedia before. This is why we advertise more broadly than to registered users.
  • 'Wiki Loves' is also used for a range of other photo competitions. Unfortunately, the word has become "reused" by some other activities over the years. I don't like it, but I've given up the struggle to argue against it. It may be confusing sometimes.
  • 'WikiLove' is something entirely different: to the best of my understanding it's a software tool to help people express appreciation for a different editor.
The banners for Wiki Loves Monuments only run in countries where the competition is held, at that time. For the US, that will be October this year, for India it's September (due to COVID we allowed countries to shift their competition month from the usual September). The banner is then a call to action, and people should be able to upload a photo that they took before. If this is unclear to you, please give that feedback to the national organizers: all these activities are organized on the national level first and foremost, and they probably appreciate input how to clarify their landing pages. effeietsanders 16:29, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Irrespective of what "Monuments" means in the context of the competition, it is presently open to a different and potentially politically charged interpretation. BD2412 T 16:43, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
By insular-minded Americans who have never looked at any of the entries, possibly. Otherwise no. Johnbod (talk) 16:51, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Putting aside the fact that Americans make up a substantial portion of the English-speaking world, why not refer to them as "historical structures" if that is the intent? Also, why do monuments get this boost, while we don't have for example a "Wiki Loves Judges" program for the thousands of missing national-level judges around the world? BD2412 T 17:46, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Well, volunteers are welcome to start any other photo competition they like. For better or worse, the Wikipedia community hasn't chosen to enforce a priority queue of topics. isaacl (talk) 19:53, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
If it were an en:wp thing, I'd support a rebrand (though not to your suggestion). But it's on Commons, & we are stuck with the name we have - which I think was given its English form by the Dutch or other Continental originators of the idea, and probably makes easy sense to a wide range of 2nd language editors. Judges aren't very attractive, and won't sit still. Was that a serious suggestion? Johnbod (talk) 20:03, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
I'm sure you are free to start any commons (using commons in its legal sense of licence-free media) photo drive you would like (or love), you just gave to go organize it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:10, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
I'm not even talking about photo drives, why do we advertise this photo drive over any other kind of content drive? We have substantial gaps in coverage of topics of great significance. BD2412 T 21:13, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Because it's been a huge success, with "more than 1,7 million pictures submitted by over 60,000 participants" since 2010. Quite a lot of which are either very pretty, or useful, or both. Johnbod (talk) 01:11, 8 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Have you organized any drive you would like a banner for? -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:18, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
I haven't been so self-indulgent, because if everyone could get a banner for a drive on their preferred topic, we would have banner ads every day. I prefer to target my drives to relevant WikiProjects, rather than pushing them on the entire community. BD2412 T 21:44, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Anyone interested can start a content drive and request a targeted central notice. There are guidelines and from the calendar of scheduled notices you can see some article-related ones. Drives targeted to specific WikiProjects are great, too. If you don't want to see any central notices, you can change your preferences accordingly. isaacl (talk) 16:06, 8 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Which is my home wiki?

Latest comment: 3 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

I have most edits in here, but my account was created on meta. So which is my home wiki? -- PythonSwarm Talk | Contribs | Global 08:53, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

The system thinks it's where your first edit it. For the rare cases where an editor or the community wants to know, they mean your most active locale Nosebagbear (talk) 09:52, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Confusing ... I have a "house" icon at Special:CentralAuth/GhostInTheMachine but you do not PythonSwarm. Neither does Nosebagbear. — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 12:44, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
It may be that the centralauth system automatically merges accounts when they are created. -- PythonSwarm Talk | Contribs | Global 03:58, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia is engaged in information laundering

Latest comment: 3 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion

First I would like to state that my general appreciation for Wikipedia is enormous, and longstanding. More recent developments have sullied this, however. Most people understand the concept of money laundering. Dirty, unusable money goes in, is channeled through certain places, and comes out as clean, usable money. A similar thing has happened to wikipedia, mostly or exclusively in regard for "hot" current topics. The background and causation is what has happened to the media around the world. Since the internet, news is basically free, so journalists today are forced plumb depths they generally would not have done in previous decades. Often, they resort to championing causes in order to attract consumers who feel good hearing things that agree with their own preconceptions. In short, journalists today frequently lie, blatantly and copiously. This happens with alarming frequency at the most prestigious media organizations. Rather than reacting to this phenomenon in a holistic and robust way, wikipedia (forgive me for labeling wikipedia as a whole for the deeds of certain individuals) has cynically exploited this situation by selectively banishing certain media outlets while blindly repeating material from equally reprehensible organizations or worse. In this way, lies are recycled through corrupt media and appear on wikipedia as clean information, apparently trustworthy and there we have information laundering. This needs to be fixed. Otherwise, the results may include general information pollution with wikipedia acting as a proliferator of lies that may approach the situation under totalitarian regimes, and of course the negative impact on wikipedia's own reputability. There may not be an easy solution, but the first step is undoubtedly to considerably reduce trust in media. Asgrrr (talk) 01:30, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Asgrrr, Is there some practical/actionable point you wish to make? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 11:08, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Pbsouthwood, I would suggest the basis that all media are now generally untrustworthy. Relax the NOR rule so that OR can be used to dispute material based on media assertions, but not to introduce material. I'm tempted to mention Snopes as an outlet that is regarded as trustworthy by Wikipedia, but frequently publishes dishonest conclusions to the point of absurdity. Since wikipedia needs to retain the services, so to speak, of media outlets, there needs to be a mechanism available to mitigate the damage done by the lapse in professionalism that is latterly apparent in the conduct of media companies in general. Asgrrr (talk) 23:32, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
RSN already does original research to check the validity of sources. If there's a track record of a source publishing absurdities and you can prove it, even using OR, you can put it at RSN. Most sources are declared unreliable based on the conclusions presented by RSN participants, not any third-party source. TryKid [dubious – discuss] 09:53, 13 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
I'm curious as to which sources are considered "reprehensible"? Have they been discussed at WP:RSN, and if not, why not? DonIago (talk) 16:02, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
I'm curious about how you would fix this. Who is the ultimate arbiter of truth? You? Us? And how is that an improvement? ―Mandruss ☎ 16:08, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Pre-RFC: Minor change to LINKSTOAVOID and ELOFFICIAL

Latest comment: 3 years ago39 comments12 people in discussion

This is an informal discussion about a proposed rules change. It -- or a modified version of it -- may or may not become an RfC, depending on the reception.

Proposal:

WP:LINKSTOAVOID lists various links to avoid, carving out an exception for links to an official page of the article's subject. See WP:ELOFFICIAL.

I propose that we modify this to disallow external links to the following, even if they are official pages:

  • Sites containing malware, malicious scripts, trojan exploits, etc. We don't want someone to follow a link from Wikipedia and get infected with malware even if someone puts the malware on an official link.
  • Sites that offer medical advice that are unambiguously harmful to the reader. Imagine if Cinnamon challenge, Salt and ice challenge or "drinking bleach will ward off coronavirus" had official webpages saying how safe they were. We wouldn't want to link to them even if they were official links.
  • Links to temporary internet content. Any website would be stupid to make a temporary page their official page, but the capacity for stupidity on the internet is limitless, so I am adding this one for completeness.

--Guy Macon (talk) 03:14, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

    • Question: How do you define temporary internet content ? --Whiteguru (talk) 07:04, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • I'm not sure we even need #1. WP:ELNEVER self-evidently supersedes any other considerations, because it uses the word "never". --Jayron32 14:27, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
        • ELNEVER does not cover bullet #1; that only covers copyvio and blacklist sites. It's in ELNO #3, but that's only "normally avoided", not "never". SpinningSpark 15:24, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
          • Mea culpa. I had thought that malware was in ELNEVER. My memory was faulty. (maybe it should be, but that's a discussion for another day). Carry on. --Jayron32 15:39, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
            • However, malware probably should be in ELNEVER and removed from ELNO. Are there even any cases were we have legitimately and knowingly linked to a site containing malware? SpinningSpark 15:51, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
              • As I said, that's a good discussion to have. Not here. This is a different discussion. --Jayron32 16:52, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support the first two bullets. Like Whiteguru, I don't know what you mean by "temporary internet content". If this is supported, both ELNEVER and ELOFFICIAL should be updated with matching language. Schazjmd (talk) 14:41, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Is #16 at WP:LINKSTOAVOID not clear? If so, it should be made clear. Was I not clear about the fact that I am talking about #16 at WP:LINKSTOAVOID? If so I apologize for not being clear on that. That's one of the good things about pre-RfCs. they smoke out unclear questions before they make it into an RfC. (Oddly enough, everything I write seems perfectly clear when I read it, and I always agree with myself. Go figure. It's almost as if I am blind to flaws in my own writing...  :( ) --Guy Macon (talk) 16:09, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      Huh, had never really focused in on #16 before. Now that I have, I have no idea what it's intended to prevent/forbid or how to identify a site that meets that description. Sorry, I don't get it. Schazjmd (talk) 16:59, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      I think #16 is addressing things like drop boxes and test pages, neither of which can be legitimately considered a subject's official site. This just seems like pointless bloat to the guidelines. If anybody ever does do that we can deal with it with common sense. SpinningSpark 17:14, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      Spinningspark, I think a prime example would be a Snapchat post. It is there for 24 hours and then gone. Don’t bother to put that post as an external link, even if it is relevant, detailed etc. (Already unlikely). If the post in itself is notable it should be archived on an internet archive and ‘preserved’ (if possible/allowed). Or not linked. Dirk Beetstra T C 19:18, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      I find it hard to believe that anyone has ever tried to use snapchat as an "official" site. But even if they have, it's so disappearingly rare that we can deal with it on an individual basis. It's complete bloat to have a special rule for it. SpinningSpark 21:20, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      We see people try to ruleslawyer direct links to stores into articles by claiming "This store page is my official site!" often enough that it's no longer surprising. The answer to Snapchat is the same as these: WP:ELOFFICIAL's "The linked content primarily covers the area for which the subject of the article is notable.", i.e., you can only do that if you're notable because of that sales page or specific Snapchat image. —Cryptic 00:06, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      Spinningspark, in fact, the rule is not intended for the official website Dirk Beetstra T C 04:57, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      The proposer explictly says this change is because ELNO makes an exception for official sites. SpinningSpark 06:58, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      Spinningspark, for malware, the ELAVOID is not current practice and hence indeed should be updated. My practice is to blacklist them globally on sight in order to protect readers (asking questions later, removal of the rule is easy). Situation is however quite rare. A simple request at WT:EL or a discussion there would have been enough. Dirk Beetstra T C 12:26, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • The cleanest way of doing this is to state in WP:ELNEVER that official sites are included and add (or in the case of malware move from ELNO]] items we never want to see. I agree with others that "temporary" is hard to define, and probably pointless to try. All content on the internet is temporary. SpinningSpark 15:58, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I do think that we need some real examples of where this has actually been a problem. The examples given are all made up and don't really have official sites (alright, Donald Trump has an official White House profile and he really did suggest drinking bleach, but I don't think even he is dumb enough to put it on the official page). I would be against adding new rules just for the sake of new rules that might come in handy one day. SpinningSpark 16:05, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Nobody has knowingly linked to a malware site -- they would be blocked no matter what the rules say -- but we have had official sites containing spam and quote possibly malware. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2013 Archive Jan 1#International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva Association, Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard/Archive 12#International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva Association and Talk:International FOP Association. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:20, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • We also have official links to sites that tell people not to vaccinate their kids or to sites that sell magic pills that cure cancer. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:22, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • I think this starting with a discussion on JzG's page about removing a link to anti-vax film site.[26] Then the ensuing WP:RGW on the page to remove the link.[27] PackMecEng (talk) 16:30, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • If this proposal is intended to ban official sites of that nature then I would oppose it. I don't think vaccination (or the lack of it) is unambiguously harmful. Rather, it's controversial, not at all in the same league as drinking bleach. Accepted medical opinion is in favour of vaccination, and I don't disagree, but if we are going to include an article on an anti-vaccine film we shouldn't be so puritanical as to forbid its official site. That's nannying and lecturing the public to a degree that is contrary to our principles. Give the facts, let the reader make up their own mind. SpinningSpark 17:26, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
        Spinningspark, antivaccination propaganda is actively harmful. See, for example, the 2015 Disneyland measles outbreak, or the murders of polio vaccination workers in Pakistan. The MMR-autism conspiracy theory has been called "the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". These sites are designed to be plausible and persuasive, and the result of their disinformation is disease and death. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:21, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
        I don't disagree with any of that, but we have an article on the film. Essentially this proposed policy is saying we won't help readers see the film for themselves, the very film the article is about. That's just censorship of the worst kind. Our article on the film, and the linked article on antivaccination, is unequivocally critical. That should be enough, we are not meant to be righting great wrongs, even really great and harmful ones. SpinningSpark 08:46, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. In fact I think we should look at expanding the spam blacklist policy (which already allows blacklisting of malware sites) to include dangerous health disinformation. We are lagging behind even Facebook here. Linking to anti-vaccination, AIDS denialist, COVID contrarian or other health disinformation sites when they are the subject of an article is a false balance issue: like linking to climate change deniers as primary sources when we describe the overwhelming evidence in third-party sources that their specific claims are full of shit. When sites contain information which is clearly and unambiguously identified by RS as dangerously wrong, linking to the site is not a service to the reader, it is the exact opposite. You do not need to visit Natural News or Mercola to see for yourself how batshit insane they are. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:16, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support, wholeheartedly agreeing with Guy's statement just above mine. XOR'easter (talk) 23:55, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support for the first two. For the third should some sort of archiving be recommended? For example allow temporary links if the contents are archived somewhere such as the wayback machine? PaleAqua (talk) 00:03, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Support 1 & Oppose 2/3 - 1 I thought was actually already the case and a no brainer to clarify with policy. The other two not so much. 2 because Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs and 3 because I am not really sure what that means. PackMecEng (talk) 02:35, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • The first case is already covered by the existing guideline - it states "If an official site is serving malware, its URL should be hidden until the website is cleaned up". Thus there is nothing to change. The third case I don't see much value in. We have no examples of this arising, but if an official site disappears, we simply remove our link - that is the organisation's problem rather than ours. If it is replaced with an unrelated site, we also remove our link. It is no different to how we would handle any offical site. It is the second case which is a problem. In the case of the examples, there is no offical site, so it is a solution looking for a problem. However it seems likely that the extreme "unambiguous" examples are not what this is targeted at. The actual result, I suspect, would be that the definition of "unambiguous" will become a gray area. Is the official site of a documentary covering a controversial health claim unambiguous? What about the official site for a TV series discussing superfoods? Or an author known for fad diets? This runs straight into WP:NOTCENSORED. I'm concerned that we'll rapidly find ourselves on a slippery slope. - Bilby (talk) 03:44, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
It is true that WP:ELOFFICIAL says
"Web sites sometimes get hijacked or hacked. This is often done to serve malware. If an official site is serving malware, its URL should be hidden until the website is cleaned up."
but it is also true that WP:LINKSTOAVOID says
Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject, one should generally avoid providing external links to... Sites containing malware, malicious scripts, trojan exploits, or content that is illegal to access in the United States.
...and it is LINKSTOAVOID that I am proposing modifying. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:58, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
I guess it seems to me that if WP:ELOFFICIAL already covers this, and we're talking about official site links only, then I'm not sure what change is needed. Maybe you intend to duplicate WP:ELOFFICIAL in the lead of WP:LINKSTOAVOID? Wouldn't it just be better to leave WP:ELOFFICIAL to explain the exceptions to its coverage, as it done now? I'm still not seeing any need for a change to incorprate a rule that is already clearly specified. - Bilby (talk) 05:08, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • BTW, for those who think that no site has an official link that keeps changing, welcome to the Internet, where pretty much everything that is possible is being done by someone:[28][29] --Guy Macon (talk) 04:58, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure that an online art installation that is deliberatly impossible to link to is the best example of an official link that would fall under the rule. - Bilby (talk) 05:08, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
That's just a silly example. The official site of a work of art is not the work itself. In this case the official site is actually [https://d0n.xyz/project/permanent-redirect/ here] (not linked because it's blacklisted for some reason) which does not appear to have changed significantly since January 2018. SpinningSpark 09:14, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Guy Macon, yes, but that is not temporary content, it is an ever changing pointer to the content. That happens, and if that collides with something on the blacklist it is a pain. Dirk Beetstra T C 18:52, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

This is basically a change request for WP:ELNEVER:

  • I agree adding bullet 1 to ELNEVER, preferably to be blacklisted on meta. For ELOFFICIAL that bullet point is NOT to be overridden with the whitelist. We generally list the official link, but there are exceptions.
  • Bullet point 2: if an RSN/community consensus shows that the site is generally too unreliable to be used for it will be blacklisted. That is not an ELNEVER in itself, though evading blacklisting is under ELNEVER. If the website is in itself notable, a neutral landing page can be whitelisted for use as official link. That is just current practice. (using that link elsewhere to use it to point to it for sourcing reasons is ELNEVER defined 'blacklist evasion' and a blockable offense).
  • Bullet point 3: being temporary content is for regular external links a problem, as 'next week' that info does not exist anymore. Think a snapchat post which is removed after 24 hours. If that is by chance the official link of the subject of the article (a notable snapchat post) where it would disappear after 24 hours, then that would be a good case for an archive link to that post to preserve 'the official link'. Also that is general practice, many defunct organisations do not have an official link anymore (or worse, it has been usurped), many campaign websites do not exist anymore (or are overwritten with a next campaign). Generally the advice is to use an archive link to the last relevant state.

So, Guy, I don't know what you wanted in this brainstorm. ELOFFICIAL almost always conflicts with ELAVOID (for companies ELOFFICIAL links to a website that we ELAVOID because it primarily exists to promote or sell a product, and quite some notable organisations have their ELOFFICIAL websites ELNEVER blacklisted). We try to solve most of these cases with common sense/amicably, and though some things that are done are better codified elsewhere (one mentioned here: malware), I don't think that this proposal is helpful, and as can be seen, results in unnecesary confusion. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:14, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

I see nothing confusing with moving malware from the existing ELNO "except for official links, these are links to avoid" guidance with the existing ELNEVER "these are links to always avoid" section. This brainstorming was an attempt to see if there is a consensus for moving any of the other things listed at ELNO to ELNEVER. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:57, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Guy Macon, the confusion is that you start your story linking ELAVOID to ELOFFICIAL, while the guideline is excepting ELOFFICIAL from ELAVOID. Don’t use temporary content, except if it is the official link (though common sense would hopefully make you find a solution), don’t link to sites which are factually incorrect, except if it is the official link of the subject. Don’t link youtube channels, except if the channel is the subject of the article. Don’t link to malware (report it to WT:SBL instead), currently except if it is the official website of the subject (you rightfully identified that this was a problematic case).
If you would have left out the ELOFFICIAL from the initial suggestion, it would have become a discussion whether malware sites, temporary content or grossly factually incorrect websites should be ELNEVER, and you would have gotten an answer. Basically all three are a no, malware should be globally blacklisted turning it into an ELNEVER, grossly incorrect websites go through a community discussion (typical at RSN), get blacklisted and turn into an ELNEVER, and the third one should be ‘frozen in time’, but it is not the type of material that would ever get blacklisted except for gross spamming/abuse, which would be strange if it is dead a day later. The ELOFFICIAL discussion may then kick in in some rare cases where they overlap, but that has generally be resolved independently. But it has nothing to do with e.g. the discussion whether malware sites should be ELAVOID or ELNEVER. Dirk Beetstra T C 05:46, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Mentioning race or ethnicity in place of nationality in the first sentence of a Biography

Latest comment: 3 years ago18 comments9 people in discussion

Per MOS:ETHNICITY, The opening paragraph should usually provide context for the activities that made the person notable. In most modern-day cases, this will be the country of which the person is a citizen, national, or permanent resident...Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless it is relevant to the subject's notability.

The way I see this most commonly manifested in the first sentence of the lead is as follows: John Doe (born 1980) is an American chef. Essentially, the common format is [name] [(birth date/death date)] is/was [nationality] [occupation/notable descriptor].

However, there are exceptions to this common format. The first is where nationality is too hard to define in one or two words (Elon Musk) and thus is left out of the first sentence (I do not intend to address this here). The second is when ethnicity/race is swapped in place of the nationality. I want to say there was some kerfuffle about this involving Polish Jews some time ago, but particularly now where I see it is with African American biographies. For example, Harriet Jacobs, Malcolm X. This is by no means uniform though, as Barack Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. follow the traditional nationality route.

The question here is not whether these persons' ethnicity was important to understanding them and thus warrants a mention in the lead. The question is whether it is acceptable to trade out nationality with race/ethnicity in the first sentence of the lead. If so, are there conditions? Or should we never do it? Should there be a firm policy on this matter? -Indy beetle (talk) 16:03, 4 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Discussion (race or ethnicity)

  • Comment The term "African American" includes the nationality "American", meaning we don't mention ethnicity "in place of" nationality, but in addition to. That's why I don't understand the question. --Rsk6400 (talk) 05:59, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • The question is whether we want to define people in ethnic terms or national terms. Irish Americans would be the same. It refers to an ethnic group within a larger country, but it is still an ethnic term. -Indy beetle (talk) 19:14, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Thanks for bringing this up, Indy beetle; it's a very good question to be thinking about. The issue that we ought to be on the lookout for is that dominant identities (e.g. male, white) tend to get coded as default, resulting in situations where we say Jane Doe was a female American astrobiologist but not John Doe was a male American astrobiologist or Stacy Smith was an African American alligator wrestler but not Karen Smith was a white American alligator wrestler. For that reason, more formal standards might be good, since they'd help us avoid inadvertent systemic bias.
However, on the other hand, I think the criterion we ought to use to determine which demographic characteristics to list in the lead should be the ones that are most essential to the subject's identity, and that's a fuzzy line. So we should be noting in the first sentence that Anne Frank was Jewish, but probably not for Edward Kosner (click through if you haven't read about Jew tagging yet), and for some other page it's a borderline case. Not having a formal standard allows us more flexibility to emphasize the aspects of a subject's identity that are important and de-emphasize those that are less so. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 02:20, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • @Sdkb: To be clear, MOS already stresses that ethnicity, religion, etc. should not be included in the lead unless its very important to that person's biography or notable work, so I'm not worried about that in the broad sense. What I am concerned about is the very specific use of it as a way of qualifying someone's nationality (the gender examples you give are also very related to this and quite good for discussion here). What I said on the talk at the Harriet Jacobs is that if we incorporate ethnic status, or I guess any minority status in the beginning of the first sentence this way we suggest that either someone is "special" for being not whatever the general ethnic expectation for their country is and thus deserves some sort of accommodation, or that they aren't "true" Americans/Brits/Kenyans/etc. and thus their national status needs qualification. The latter is the greater problem. -Indy beetle (talk) 02:57, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I think that there are cases where both ethnicity and nationality are relevant to a person's notability, and so they should both be mentioned, per WP:ETHNICITY. I agree with Sdkb above that sometimes the exact criterion for when notability qualifies for adding multiple such characteristics to an article is a bit fuzzy, and there are pros and cons to that. But, I'm not sure if that is what your question is addressing as I cannot really think of a case that I have seen where ethnicity fully replaces nationality, as the cases you have mentioned are instances of mentioning both, so I'm not sure what your question is fully. Nangears (talk) 02:54, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • @Nangears: Essentially, why are we calling Harriet Jacobs an "African-American writer" when we aren't calling John F. Kennedy an "Irish-American politician"? And does that difference matter? -Indy beetle (talk) 03:02, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • @Indy beetle: Well as Jacobs's most notable work is directly tied to her being African-American, I would say it is relevant to her notability and should be included in the lead. An argument could be made that it is relevant to his notability that Kennedy is an Irish American, as he is known for being the only Catholic American president to date, and that his Catholicism is related to his Irish heritage. Personally, I would say that is a tenuous argument, as it is notable that he is Catholic which is related to being Irish-American, but being Irish-American is not what is actually notable. Further, what qualifies Kennedy as being notable for an article is him being a US president and all American presidents are notable enough in their own right for a page, and him being Catholic is not an inherent part of him being president nor is it inherent to what makes him notable. For this same reason, the article for Barack Obama, as you mentioned above, does not include that in the first sentence of his lead, as he is notable for being a president of the United Staes, without qualifying that he is also notable as the first African-American president of the US. By contrast, not every American author is notable enough for an article, and being African-American is an inherent part of Jacobs's notability, as a large part of her notability is tied to her autobigraphy, which is about her experience as a slave, which is directly tied to being African-American. I agree with Sdkb above, that at times this can lead to a bias, based on what is considered default by societal norms, but there is also issues with wholesale adding or removing ethnicity from all biographies, so I think that it might be necessary to leave some ambiguity in WP:ETHNICITY. Nangears (talk) 03:23, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Note that nationality or ethnicity is used as an adjective not as a noun. Barack Obama is "an "American politician and attorney," Malcolm X was "an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist," Anne Frank was "a German-Dutch diarist of Jewish origin." Here nationality or ethnicity tells us where that person was active. Malcolm X's following was largely limited to African Americans, while Obama was elected president of the United States. Anne Frank was forced to hide in an attic because she was a Jewish person living in the Netherlands. That seems to follow common sense. TFD (talk) 03:26, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • To @The Four Deuces: @Nangears:, then what about Martin Luther King Jr.? Is it not "inherent" to his notability that he was also an African American, much like Malcolm X? Is the MLK article "wrong" to not call him an "African-American civil rights activist" in the beginning of the first sentence (ditto for Rosa Parks). What I'm saying is, there doesn't appear to be "common sense" with how this is applied. I think we need better guidance on this issue, or at least direct people in MOS/policy to form a LOCALCONSENSUS. -Indy beetle (talk) 03:39, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • King and Parks have more crossover appeal. They are seen as icons by the broader American public, while Malcolm X is not. And King spoke about the rights of all Americans, while Malcolm X restricted his demands to African American rights. Of course, the dividing line isn't clear. Also, we can look to tertiary sources as examples. I just think that having hard and fast rules won't provide better results than following common sense. TFD (talk) 04:11, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I fail to see the big deal in this. There is no harm done in getting this "wrong". "African-American writer" and "Irish-American politician" can be present or absent and it is of little consequence. If there is a dispute, the dispute needs to be resolved. Bus stop (talk) 03:52, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • I for one would say that yes, it should be mentioned in the lead section of MLK as it is in Malcolm X. If we agree on that we can just go and add it there. El Millo (talk) 03:59, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • Commenting on the criterion relevant to the subject's notability: I think that everybody around the world - provided they have ever heard of them - knows that Anne Frank was Jewish, Harriet Jacobs, Malcolm X, and MLK were African Americans. That's because you simply cannot tell their story without mentioning their ethnic background, and so it is "inherent" to their notability. But many people know a lot about JFK and still are ignorant of his background. With Obama we really have to use common sense, since POTUS is (or should be) the president of all Americans, regardless of background. I think the current solution is quite intelligent ("American" in the first sentence, "first African-American president" in the next). --Rsk6400 (talk) 05:57, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
        • It is a minor issue. One can quibble over whether or not to say in the lede Anne Frank was Jewish or Harriet Jacobs, Malcolm X, and MLK were African Americans. In the grand scheme of these articles there are arguments pro and con. If we omit it early on we can include it in short order. There are literally arguments for early inclusion of these sorts of identities and slightly delayed inclusion of these elements of identity. For instance an argument for slightly later inclusion of identity is to not allow identity to possibly displace the reason for notability. No one is notable, for instance, solely for being Jewish or black or Irish-American or Catholic. By delaying mention of these identities we allow a reason for notability to be stated first. In a second or third sentence identities of these sorts can be mentioned. Bus stop (talk) 18:03, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Just a comment that the whole discussion somehow assumes that the change would only affect articles on American personalities. But in fact it will affect Russian/Ukrainian, Polish/Ukrainian, Bulgarian/Macedonian, Uzbek/Tajik, Armenian/Turkish/Iranian, Georgian/Abkhazian and you name it personalities. And I can already foresee continuous massive edit-warring in thousands of articles (most of which are currently not monitored by any meta-active users) if this information is allowed to be in the lede.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:18, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • @Ymblanter: Yes I didn't mean for it to be so US centric (why I mentioned Polish Jews), the African-American/American example is just the most common example I'm familiar with. -Indy beetle (talk) 04:07, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I think the guidance is fine. In general the first sentence should be nationality. And in later parts of the lead, ethnicity can be mentioned if it gives good context about what's notable. I would not take anything in particular from the various examples, no one goes through them all and tries to make them conform one way or the other. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:17, 6 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Notability guidelines for geographic features

Latest comment: 3 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Some users believe that WP:GEOLAND is far too broad because it leads to the creation of thousands of unsourced stubs about villages in certain countries. See Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(geographic_features)#Populated_places for more details. WP:NGEO is all around barebones compared to other notability guidelines, so we will need to establish specific criteria for everything. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 15:24, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Which other users do you speak for? Phil Bridger (talk) 15:35, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
WP:GEOLAND does not lead to unsourced stubs. Sloppy editing leads to unsourced stubs. When unsourced geostubs come up at New Page Review they are sent back to draft. We do have a large number of older unsourced geostubs but the issue there is finding anyone who wants to take on the work of sourcing them. No change of policy will solve that for us. Mccapra (talk) 15:53, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
We absolutely should be giving more leeway to geographic features than some other areas. Geography is a fundamental thing an encyclopaedia should be doing and we should be covering it to the deepest level possible. Geography is generally neutral and free of the promotion and spam of the real problem areas; people, organisations, and products. Those are the areas that need extra rules, not geography. No geo article that verifiably exists should ever be deleted, at worst per WP:PRESERVE they can be merged somewhere if there really isn't enough information to expand them (which also doesn't require extra rules). As for "uncited stubs", its next to impossible to get uncited anything to stick nowadays. The vast majority of problematic geo stubs were created years ago by automated processes from unreliable databases (mostly tracing back to GNIS), and large swathes of them have been brought to AFD. That sort of mass creation by bot is no longer being done and it is highly unlikely that a bot will ever be approved in the future for such a task. There is no need for new rules for that either. SpinningSpark 16:51, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

A Universal Code of Conduct draft for review

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Cross-posting from the Village Pump WMF, see post there :) Patrick Earley (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Inviting Wider participation of the community on AfDs I've nominated, they will determine the future of the cricket notability guidelines.

Latest comment: 3 years ago11 comments8 people in discussion

I've nominated a few articles for deletion, whose outcome will determine the cricket notability guidelines which is currently being debated. Editor's over there are waiting for some AfDs to end so that they can understand the wider community consensus regarding those guidelines.

I've posted this here to invite wider participation from the community and not just those related to the cricket project since I believe a lot of poor quality articles are unnecessarily hanging around Wikipedia.

I believe this is an appropriate notification per the guidelines on the canvassing page.

Thanks!

Iitianeditor (talk) 17:46, 10 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

  • @Iitianeditor: That's arse about face. Individual AFDs do not determine the future of guidelines. They determine whether or not articles are within the current guidelines. To change guidelines (or their status) a discussion directly about that guideline is required. Also, if you wish people to participate in a discussion(s) then you really need to link to it(them). SpinningSpark 19:11, 10 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    Spinningspark well, we do all try to the best of our abilities. Thanks for your suggestions, why don't you implement them yourself? Also please read the cricket notability discussion which I can't be "arsed" to link. Iitianeditor (talk) 19:53, 10 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    And how is he supposed to find that? You've picked the wrong sort of cricketers to start with. The soft underbelly is old pre-Wisden English players we don't have any stats for. Johnbod (talk) 02:16, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    There are editors who believe that guidelines are best developed from the ground up: see what people agree upon by consensus in deletion discussions, and then propose a corresponding update to the guideline, so that the proposal discussion should go smoothly (I believe TonyBallioni and Bagumba are two examples). Personally I generally like having a discussion amongst the interested parties to reach consensus and alter the guideline accordingly, but I understand why those who feel that guidelines should be descriptive and not prescriptive prefer doing it the other way. isaacl (talk) 21:02, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hmm. New editor mass nominating related articles at a rate of more than one per minute. If this is an attempt to change the guidelines, these should just be speedy closed, because that's not how it works. As for "arse about face", that's a first for me. Not sure I get it even after googling. Presumably it's intelligible in the parts of the English speaking world that care about cricket? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 01:20, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Rhododendrites, I think what he means is bass ackwards. But, yeah, their editing history so far is, um, atypical for a new user. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:40, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, I more or less figured out the meaning after looking it up. Just never seen it before. But thanks for translating into the [American?] equivalent. :) — Rhododendrites talk \\ 01:42, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
See wikt:arse about face. SpinningSpark 08:43, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I have a sneaky suspicion about whose sock this guy is. If I'm right, this whole thing is a false flag operation. Suppose, arguendo, that you like the crappy overly permissive cricket guidelines, would like to lock them in forever, and also have no ethics. One way to go about this is to make a bunch of rapid fire nominations while loudly trumpeting that this is a referendum on WP:NCRIC. By singling out just one country and making nominations at a rate of million a minute, you guarantee that the nominations will fail and that- by extension- will make WP:NCRIC more unassailable. Reyk YO! 10:25, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    Reyk, we need to be specific to open an SPI. Otherwise it's just fishing. Can you be more specific? Glen (talk) 11:31, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

User talk page archiving?

Latest comment: 3 years ago7 comments7 people in discussion

Is there any official policy on requiring users to archive their talk pages? I've seen several instances over the years of users with exceptionally long user talk pages (100's of messages), who have resisted all polite suggestions that they set up archiving.

In one case, I cajoled the user into allowing me to set up archiving for them. In second case, another admin came along and set it up for them, against the user's wishes. The arguments are always the same: "It's my talk page, I'll do what I want with it", vs "The needs of the project trump your personal preferences". There's one of these brewing now. I'm not sure where things stand policy-wise, so I'm not sure how to proceed. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:29, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

WP:OWNTALK is quite plain on this, The length of user talk pages, and the need for archiving, is left up to each editor's own discretion. So no, forcible archiving of user talk pages should not be done. SpinningSpark 15:07, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
What about for really long ones? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:11, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Emir of Wikipedia, same rule. You can friendly suggest that the talkpage length is posing problems, but that is it. Dirk Beetstra T C 19:37, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • There is no “rule” mandating archiving. I am someone who takes that to the opposite extreme - I treat my user talk page like I would voicemail... instead of archiving old messages, I simply delete/blank them (I only keep stuff I want to respond to). Managing one’s OWNTALK is up to the individual editor. Blueboar (talk) 20:54, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • With modern browsers, the chance of a user's talk page becoming so large as to cause legitimate technical issues has dropped significantly. If a user's page *is* becoming so large as to cause identifiable problems, and they're being wilfully dismissive of concerns, then they're likely guilty of something more general like disruptive editing. There isn't an explicit policy about very long talk pages, but there are plenty of guidelines about failure to work collaboratively with others. We should generally be encouraging concerned users to ask nicely, and taking action if the editor is deliberately ignoring legitimate concerns. ~ mazca talk 21:26, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
    Not everyone is able to use modern devices or browsers, and scrolling through long talk pages on a mobile device can be quite difficult. I disagree that editors who haven't agreed to shorten their talk pages are likely guilty of poor behaviour. There are many long-time, experienced editors with lengthy talk pages, including a current arbitrator, who for various reasons prefer to manage their talk pages in that way. I agree there is no consensus agreement for further measures beyond encouragement. isaacl (talk) 21:56, 11 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:Discussions for discussion

Latest comment: 3 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Hopefully this will be of some use. I have created Wikipedia:Discussions for discussion as a place for discussion closers to discuss their opinions about how pending discussions should be closed, particularly in difficult cases. This is intended to be distinct from merely requesting the closure of a discussion, or for reviewing discussions that have already been closed. Fingers crossed that this proves useful and productive. BD2412 T 06:35, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Who will the would-be-closers going to be in discussion with on that page? I predict it will be mostly with partisans in the original discussion who think it should be closed according to their preference. Also, I don't see how closures can be discussed without referring to arguments made in the original, which will invite counter-arguments etc. So, despite the intention, difficult discussions will just repeat themselves here despite the intention. Maybe it could work if editors who voted in the original discussion are not allowed to participate in the closure discussion. Zerotalk 07:00, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Discussions for discussion sounds like one of those peculiarly Wikipedia things, like List of lists of lists. Reyk YO! 10:07, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Don't forget the list of lists that do not contain themselves  . –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 11:53, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Bertrand Russell would approve. Reyk YO! 13:10, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Zero0000: My hope would be that the noticeboard develops its own community of interest, like frequent RM and XfD closers, who will be the ones to respond to issues raised based on their experience. BD2412 T 20:23, 12 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Naming convention policy for articles about subject's death?

Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

So, lately, I've seen good number of move requests pertaining to the titling of articles involving the death of its subject, such as "Death of...", "Killing of...", "Murder of...", etc. Just wondering, do we have a naming convention policy about the best/preferred way to title these articles? If we do, I cannot find it. Steel1943 (talk) 20:07, 13 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

You're probably looking for this recent discussion. --Izno (talk) 20:21, 13 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Ohh yeah. Steel1943 (talk) 20:37, 13 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
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